Arlene MacDonald
Honors College Faculty
Director, Medicine & Society
Email: almacdon@central.uh.edu
Arlene Macdonald joined the Honors College in 2023, teaching in and directing the Medicine and Society program. Before coming to UH, she was a faculty member in the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch, where she taught the social, ethical and political dimensions of health and illness to medical students and graduate students. Macdonald received her doctoral degree in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research used ethnographic methods to understand the interplay of the biological, the socio-political, and spiritual in the resurrected lives of organ transplant recipients. Her recent research examines the health endeavors undertaken by Sikhs in the city of Brampton, Ontario. She regularly collaborates with scholarly, interprofessional, and community-based organizations to advance health equity.