Can Insiders Be Activists? Narrating Local History Truthfully in an Academic Health Center.

I am a practicing pediatrician and a medical historian.   My early research focused on the early history of premature infant care and neonatal medicine.   Featured in my book, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Neonatal Intensive Care, I examined how the controversy around the introduction of baby incubators at the dawn of the 20th century became a flash point for broader anxieties around medical technology, eugenics, and the role of physicians versus mothers in the care of young infants.   
My later research moved to this history of vaccines, and why this highly-regarded public health intervention ignited fierce public resistance in the late 20th century.  The alleged links between vaccines and autism were an important part of this story which led me to work on other aspect of the history of autism as well.  I have spoken and written in particular about the role of Leo Kanner in shaping both the definition of autism and the construction of an associated stereotype of parents as brilliant but cold and aloof.

In recent years I have been focusing on history, race, and health disparities.  I have been working on a project exploring this question in Duke's home community of Durham, North Carolina.   The first phase of this work looked at four case studies over the course of the past century:  tuberculosis in the early 1900s, childbirth during desegregation, HIV, and diabetes since 2000.   More recent work explores why understanding and acknowledging local history is essential to building trust between academic health centers and their communities.

Damon Tweedy, MD is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and a staff psychiatrist within the Durham Veteran Affairs Health Care System. He completed both medical school and his specialty training at Duke. He also graduated from Yale Law School.

Within the VA system, he directs a team of mental health providers working across six primary care clinics. At the medical school, he leads a behavioral health seminar for second-year medical students and is a small group leader for another course that introduces medical students to advanced aspects of the doctor-patient relationship. He is also the faculty advisor for the medical student psychiatry interest group.

Dr. Tweedy has written extensively about the intersection of race, medicine, and mental health, both in academic journals and popular print publications. His 2015 book, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine, made the New York Times bestseller list and was selected by TIME Magazine as a top non-fiction book that year.