December 11, 2025, 3pm EST
Zoom Link:
https://ncsu.zoom.us/j/91002407118?pwd=dyZdvgStReLpkrQFHfwpaFSQHEDdPk.1
CARE: Community Action, Research, and Education, Part of the Later Chapters in the Long Arc of a Career
Dr. Sandy D. Lane, PhD, MPH – Syracuse University
Talk Summary:
A combination of family needs, increased university work, and some health issues made me realize that the large global health studies in which I participated in the middle part of my career were no longer a good fit for me. Actually, it was in 2007 while walking through a village in Northern Nigeria using a cane and trying to avoid mounds of biting ants that I thought to myself, “I must be nuts to still be doing this.” The Nigerian villagers were kind but humorous saying, “Usually America sends us the young ones, but now they sent an old one,” a sentiment that made me think about my next act.
The next act, with anthropologist Robert A Rubinstein, was to develop a model of field-school-at-home that links the community-participatory analysis of public policy with pedagogy, called CARE (Community Action Research and Education). The model we have developed, and which is the subject of this ASA Thursday Chat, links the community-participatory analysis of public policy with pedagogy. The concept is an integration of public health, action anthropology, and community-based participatory research with teaching by bringing students out of the classroom to address health disparities in their communities. The CARE model builds on “Action Anthropology,” as created by Sol Tax and on the theory of reciprocity (Marcel Mauss) in that community members are equal partners in the research group, and each CARE project is implemented at the request of community leaders. Previous CARE projects focused on lead poisoning in rental housing, food deserts, neighborhood violence, and healthcare for the uninsured, and each CARE project is implemented at the request of community leaders. Faculty, community members, and students are co-authors on publications. Our CARE publications have included over 70 students and trainees as co-authors, including obstetrical residents, graduate students, undergrads, and 5 high school students, as well as over 20 community members.
Bio:
In May 2025 Dr. Lane retired from Syracuse University, where she was the founding chair of the Department of Public Health, with a cross-appointment in Anthropology. She also held the Laura and L. Douglas Meredith Professorship of Teaching Excellence. She also holds a Research Professorship in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Upstate Medical University. Her doctorate is from the joint program in Medical Anthropology at San Francisco and Berkeley and her MPH in Epidemiology is from UC Berkeley. Dr. Lane’s research, teaching, advocacy, and health policy work addresses the social causes of health inequalities affecting infants, children, and families in the Middle East, Nigeria, and the urban United States. Before completing her university education, she spent 13 years as a registered nurse, working in pediatrics at Boston City Hospital and later in hospitals in San Francisco. From 1988-1992 she was the Ford Foundation child survival and reproductive health program officer for the Middle East, providing technical expertise to diverse scholars, coordinating the funding and administration of 40 projects with a million dollar per year budget in Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and the West Bank and Gaza. She also participated in research studies on maternal mortality in Egypt and Nigeria, blinding eye disease in rural Egypt, Islamic influences on abortion and female genital cutting in Egypt, and needle exchange in Canada and the United States. Dr. Sandy Lane also was the founding director of Syracuse Healthy Start, a federally-funded infant mortality program, and served as a consultant to the WHO tuberculosis program, UNFPA, UNICEF, JAHCO, and the National Academy of Medicine. For the past two decades, her fieldwork has been geographically centered in Syracuse, New York.