SMA awards: Career Achievement Award Recipient
The SMA is pleased to give the Career Achievement in the Practice of Medical Anthropology to Dr. Cecil Helman. An MD, Dr. Helman has worked to create and promote the subfield of clinically applied medical anthropology through his teaching and publications. Well known for his classic textbook, Culture Health and Illness, which is available in many languages, Dr. Helman has also contributed a plethora of articles to the medical anthropology literature, many of them required reading in medical anthropology courses. His books also include The Body of Frankenstein’s Monster: Essays in Myth & Medicine (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), Doctors and Patients: An Anthology (Oxford: Radcliffe Medical Press, 2003), and two books of poetry. He has established training programs for medical, nursing, and anthropology students in his native South Africa, in London, where he teaches, and in Brazil. In addition, he has directed a number of applied projects in Brazil, South Africa, England, and the United States, using the projects to help train local applied anthropologists wherever he works. He has also worked as a family practitioner in London for many years.