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Samantha Hurst, Ph.D. is a Project Scientist in the UCSD Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Longevity Science. As a medical anthropologist, Dr. Hurst’s mission of work emphasizes the goal of partnership with community collaborators as cultural health colleagues and as primary drivers of the knowledge that will assist in improving health and health equity for their own communities.

Dr. Hurst is considered an expert in using applied frameworks that elevate a justice-based and health equity approach to research. She teaches both qualitative methods and mixed methods research design for the Masters of Public Health Program (MPH) and the Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health (JDP). Dr. Hurst also teaches a course in the MPH on “Anthropology and Public Health,” which emphasizes principles that shape a sense of shared responsibility within the academic-community partnership by mutually enforcing co-learning and knowledge democracy, and thus reclaiming the expertise that resides in real-life communities beyond academia In addition, Dr. Hurst is a faculty member for the UCSD Research Ethics Program and prioritizes a bio-cultural ethics approach both as an ally and collaborator.

Dr. Hurst's research collaborations span a rich variety of healthcare domains such as neurology, psychiatry, behavioral health, health policy, community and family health, medical education, and tobacco prevention/education. For over two decades she has been a part of community projects focusing on unique U.S. and international ethnic/cultural communities - American Indian, Australian Aborigine, First Nation [Canada], Maori [New Zealand], Somali-Americans, Yoruba [Nigeria], and U.S. combat veterans.

Dr. Hurst received her Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and completed her Post-Doctoral Fellowship training in Cultural Psychiatry and Medical Anthropology at the Alcohol Research Center at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.