Rachel Ohman, M.D

Rachel Ohman is currently on a research year between her third and fourth years of medical school via the Dean’s Leadership in Health and Science Scholarship (DLHSS) at the David Geffen School of Medicine. She is working as an AOT-LA ethnographer, hoping to learn the power of mixed methods research in investigating the care of individuals with mental illness. Her varied research interests include exploring how twenty-first century sociocultural understandings inform the practice of biomedicine at home and abroad.

Rachel received her BA in Biological Sciences with a medical anthropology minor in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine (HIPS) from the University of Chicago in 2012. She then spent two years doing translational neuroscience research at the NIH via the Post-Baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) program. There she integrated her bench research with a developing passion for health disparities as a fellow in the NIH Academy, engaging in academic study as well as community outreach with women with mental illness living in transitional housing in Baltimore. After entering medical school in 2014, Rachel spent six weeks in the rural western region of Ghana doing formative qualitative research on maternal and early child health. 

Research interests

Medical anthropology, epistemology of biomedicine, urban health disparities, poverty, race, health policy, equitable biomedical research