Svea Closser

Dr. Svea Closser, PhD, MPH

Current Position: Associate professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Education: PhD in Anthropology, 2008, Emory University

Biography

Dr. Svea Closser received her PhD in Medical Anthropology from Emory University in 2008, after having successfully defended her dissertation titled “Resisting Eradication: The Cultures of Global Health and Local Health Systems in the Polio Eradication Initiative in Pakistan”. Alongside her PhD, Dr. Closser received an MPH from Emory University in 2005, and a BA from Pomona College in 2000.

Dr. Closser’s work has been focused around the utilization of ethnographic methods to observe disparities in health outcomes and the intricacies of public health policymaking and implementation. She published a book titled “Chasing Polio in Pakistan” with Vanderbilt University Press in 2010 which netted her the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize for best book project in the field of medicine. Much of her work is concentrated around health systems in the Indian subcontinent, and for her distinction, she earned a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship from 2018 to 2020. Beyond her work pertaining to disease control and vaccination in South Asia, Dr. Closser has published work pertaining to gender and labor in community health worker programs in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Furthermore, her research also extends to female empowerment through volunteer community health work in Ethiopia.

Books

From left to right:

Chasing Polio in Pakistan: Why the World’s Largest Public Health Initiative May Fail

Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, Third Edition: Biosocial and Cultural Approaches (with Dr. Peter Brown)

Foundations of Global Health: An Interdisciplinary Reader (with Dr. Peter Brown)

Dissertation Analysis

Dissertation Title: “Global Development in Policy and Practice: The Polio Eradication Initiative from Atlanta to Rural Pakistan”

Despite the fact that the polio vaccine was never patented, the disease has yet to be eradicated across the globe. In fact, global polio case counts have remained stagnant and relatively unchanged since 2003, with Pakistan being one of the last four countries in the world with endemic polio.

In 1988, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution calling for polio eradication. This ambitious endeavor, called the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), was extensive — employing thousands, costing around a billion US dollars, and successfully vaccinating billions around the globe against polio. However, Dr. Closser takes a closer look at the failures of this project specifically in the nation of Pakistan, and explores the reasons behind the inability of the GPEI to fully reach its goal of total polio eradication within 20 years. In the dissertation, Dr. Closser outlines suggestions for future eradication efforts that circumvents the problems faced by the GPEI.