Nora Kenworthy

Nora Kenworthy is a professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington–Bothell and holds adjunct appointments in the departments of anthropology and global health at the University of Washington–Seattle. At its heart, her work examines how citizens’ engagement with health systems has wide-ranging political and social impacts. She received her PhD in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University and her BA in political science from Williams College. Kenworthy is the author of Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), and the award-winning ethnography, Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho (Vanderbilt University Press, 2017). She is the coeditor of two additional books and the author of numerous articles on how politics and technology shape health around the world. She has written for Scientific American, Popular Science, The Washington Post, and others, and her research is frequently covered in the news media.

At a highly polarized time for many health issues, and with digital media environments fueling division and misinformation, Kenworthy’s project, “Public Health in Polarized Times: Finding “Islands of Solidarity” for Effective Digital Public Health Campaigns in the U.S.” aims to identify, broaden, and deepen “islands of solidarity” around core public health values and messages. Her project will identify where Americans find common ground and purpose when it comes to their health, and work with institutional partners to develop, test, and refine digital messaging strategies to decrease polarization and build common cause related to population health.