Discipline(s):
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Area(s) of Expertise:
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E-Mail:
sspatel2@wisc.edu

Background:
Sejal Patel is interested in the methodologies used in population-level health research. Specifically, she is interested in understanding why individual-level analyses of risk have become such a prominent theme in health research, policy and intervention. Sejal’s doctoral research focuses on the 1960s, a period when methodologies used in health research were rich in variety, and she uses the Roseto study, recognized by current investigators for reporting on community-level variables of cardiovascular disease, as a window into the underlying values and interests that guided early investigators in their debates over best methods. Her work highlights how currently used styles of research in population health were the products of specific institutional and disciplinary contexts, conceptions of disease etiology and prevention, and research and medical center cultures. As a Health and Societies Scholar, she plans to trace how early and influential investigations guided how later investigators entering the field of coronary heart disease research designed their studies, selected their populations, interpreted their findings, and recommended policy. She hopes to contribute to the field’s efforts to reorient research, policy and interventions around the more contextual factors of behavior and biology, and to debates about how research should be organized at the national and institutional levels. Sejal Patel joins the University of Wisconsin from the University of Pennsylvania, where she will receive her Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science.

Journal Articles:
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