Carolyn Sargent facts for kids

Carolyn Sargent is an American medical anthropologist, which means she is an expert who studies how people's culture and beliefs affect their health. She is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis where she taught about anthropology and women's and gender studies.

Sargent is known for her work on gender studies and health. She is especially interested in the health of women and families, particularly in communities with less money. She has traveled to many places for her research, including the countries of Benin and Mali in West Africa, as well as Jamaica and France. In these places, she studied how people make decisions about their health, especially when it comes to having babies and taking care of mothers.

Sargent has also been a part of ethics committees at major hospitals like Barnes Jewish Hospital and Parkland Memorial Hospital. An ethics committee helps doctors and patients make difficult decisions about medical care. She believes that everyone should have the right to good healthcare and has studied how different countries, like France, try to provide this for their citizens.

Education and Early Life

Carolyn Fishel, who later became Carolyn Sargent, was born to Dr. and Mrs. Wesley Fishel. She was a very bright student and graduated from Michigan State University in 1968 with high honors. She studied Japanese, French, and international studies. During her last year of college, she took an anthropology class and loved it. A professor encouraged her to continue studying it.

She won a special award called a Marshall Scholarship, which allowed her to study in England at the University of Manchester. There, she earned a master's degree in social anthropology in 1970.

Life in the Peace Corps

In 1971, Carolyn married Merritt W. Sargent and joined him in Natitingou, West Africa, for a Peace Corps project. The Peace Corps is a program where Americans volunteer to help people in other countries. Their project taught local farmers how to use animals like oxen to plow their fields, instead of doing all the work by hand.

While in West Africa, Carolyn became very interested in the health of mothers and babies after visiting a local maternity clinic. This experience inspired her to focus her future studies on this topic. She returned to Michigan State University and earned her Ph.D. in anthropology in 1979.

Career and Contributions

Sargent began her teaching career at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1980. She became a full professor there in 1992 and also directed the Women's Studies Program. In 2008, she moved to Washington University in St. Louis to become a professor in the anthropology department.

She was also the president of the Society for Medical Anthropology, an organization for experts in her field. As president, she encouraged other anthropologists to share their research with people who make laws about healthcare. She believed that their knowledge could help improve healthcare for everyone. Sargent suggested that important research could be summarized into shorter, easy-to-read reports for lawmakers.

Research on Health and Culture

During her time in the Peace Corps, Sargent worked in a maternity clinic. She started to collect information about the weights of newborn babies, even though the clinic's staff didn't think it was important. This information, along with her other observations, became the foundation for her research on the health of mothers and children.

Over her long career, Sargent's research grew to include other topics. She studied medical ethics, the health of immigrants, and how governments and hospitals work together to provide care to people.

Honors and Awards

Carolyn Sargent has received many awards for her important work. Here are a few of them:

• 1975: Rockefeller-Ford Program Award for research on population policy.
• 2003: Enduring Edited Collection Book Prize from the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction.
• 2006: Grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
• 2012: Eileen Basker Memorial Prize for a book she co-edited about how health, family, and government are connected around the world.
• 2012: Council for Anthropology and Reproduction (CAR) Most Notable Recent Collection Award.