Lauren Textor

Lauren Textor, MD, PhD is a physician resident in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds an MD and PhD in anthropology from UCLA. Dr. Textor’s research examines the downstream impacts of health care and drug policies especially as they impact health care providers and people seeking health care. Her research involves ethnographic fieldwork in large-scale encampments in southern California, in collaboration with grassroots harm reduction organizations, to examine how housing policies, drug law enforcement, and health care initiatives affect long-term trajectories for people who use opioids. Her most recent work investigates the ways that past experiences with criminalization and with health care shape embodied effects of medications. Her research and advocacy are aimed at reimagining care to promote health and justice.

Research interest

Immigrant Health and Health Care, Race and Health, Health Disparities and Interventions, Women’s Health, Physician-Patient Encounters, Social Contexts of Genetics, and Epigenetics.