Claire D. Clark, PhD, MPH is a self-identified slow historian of health who teaches in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. Her interdisciplinary research explores the relationship between health activism and the development of healthcare institutions in the 20th and 21st century United States, paying particular attention to the ways in which often-volatile constructions of “community” have produced legacies of harm as well as healing. Her teaching is grounded in a liberal arts tradition which employs humanistic strategies including shared inquiry, close reading, historical contextualization, and experiential learning as methods for cultivating both personal and professional identity formation.

Claire’s work has been recognized with fellowships, grants, and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the John P. McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics, the Fulbright Institute of Education Incorporated, and the American Journal of Public Health, among others. She has previously served as invited teaching faculty at the Harvard Macy Institute for Educators in the Health Professions and in 2025 will serve as a Michael E. DeBakey fellow in the History of Medicine at the National Library of Medicine. She is the current co-president of the Health Humanities Consortium.

The oldest daughter of a local newspaper editor and a second-wave feminist homemaker, Claire was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, where she attended public schools. She was educated at Vassar College (BA, 2003) and Emory University (combined PhD and MPH, 2014) and has taught at the University of Kentucky since January 2015. She is currently a tenured Chellgren Endowed Associate Professor of Behavioral Science and History and an affiliate of both the College of Medicine’s Program for Bioethics and Center for Health Engagement Transformation. She is the author of The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States (Columbia University Press, 2017) and a member of the University of Kentucky's Substance Use Research Priority Area (SUPRA) and Racial Health Equity (UNITE) Research Priority Area.