Claire D. Clark, PhD, MPH
Connect
(859) 257-3513 (ext 73513)ccl235@uky.edu
Positions
- Associate Professor of Behavioral Science (secondary appointment in the Department of History)
- Director of Undergraduate Certificate in Medical Behavioral Science
College Unit(s)
Biography and Education
Biography
I’m a historian who teaches at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine and current co-president of the Health Humanities Consortium. I am a tenured Associate Professor of Behavioral Science who is interested in the reparatory potential of historical and psychoanalytic thought.
I’m a person in recovery with public health training, not a clinician.
My scholarship spans cultural, biographical, and applied health history in the 20th and 21st century United States. My dissertation-turned-book, The Recovery Revolution, traced the industrialization of abstinence-based addiction treatment and inspired ongoing archival and oral history projects about therapeutic communities in the United States. I am currently working on two new book-length projects. The first, co-authored with philosopher Dien Ho, is a cultural biography of anesthesiologist and bioethicist Henry Knowles Beecher. The second explores present-day consequences of historical divisions between the mental health and addictions fields.
My work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, and the Fulbright Foundation. I have been a visiting scholar or faculty member at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, the Harvard Macy Institute for Educators in the Health Professions, and the National Library of Medicine, among other educational institutions.
I mentor and teach pre-medical and medical students from various disciplinary backgrounds, as well as graduate (masters and doctoral) students in both History and Clinical and Translational Science. I founded and direct a unique pre-medical certificate program in Medical Behavioral Science. I also serve as associate director of an NIH-funded training program in Drug Abuse Research.
I’m passionate about the craft of the historical monograph and serve as the inaugural book reviews editor of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, a leading journal in its field for over a century.
I welcome conversation about any of these things; to make an appointment during my office hours, click here.
Education
PhD, Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University, 2014 (Competitively awarded Graduate Arts & Sciences Fellowship)
MPH, Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences, Emory University, 2014 (dual degree with PhD; Competitively awarded Irene K. Woodruff Merit Scholarship)
BA, Film; Correlate: Philosophy, Vassar College, 2003 (Phi Beta Kappa; General Honors; Departmental Honors)
Training fellowships in both public health (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011-2013) and academic medicine (McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at UTHealth Houston, 2013-2014)
In progress: Graduate certificate in Appalachian Studies at the University of Kentucky, expected December 2026 (coursework in Appalachian history, oral history methods, and curatorial history and theory)
Selected Publications
"The Battles Over Addiction Treatment" American Historical Review, 130, no. 3 (2025): 1123–1133.
The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States (Columbia University Press, 2017)
Claire D. Clark and Amy C. Sullivan, "Diagnoses and Labels" chapter in Do Less Harm: Ethics for Health Historians, edited by Courtney E. Thompson and Kylie E. Smith (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025)
Jacob Steere-Williams, Justin Barr, Claire D. Clark, and Raúl Necochea López, "Remaking the Case for History in Medical Education" Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 78, no. 1 (2023): 1-8. (Introduction to a Special Issue of JHMAS on integrating the history of medicine into health professions education)
“Archival Research” chapter in Research Methods in Health Humanities, edited by Craig Klugman and Erin Gentry Lamb (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Claire D. Clark and Emily Dufton, “Peter Bourne’s Drug Policy and the Perils of a Public Health Ethic” American Journal of Public Health, 105, no. 2 (2015): 283-292. (Winner, Paper of the Year Award from the American Public Health Association)
“‘Chemistry is the New Hope’: Therapeutic Communities and Methadone Maintenance, 1965-1971” Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 26, no. 2 (2012): 192–216.