Christian Warren is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, studying the social dynamics of health, class, race and the natural and built environment. His book, Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, won the American Public Health Association’s Arthur Viseltear Award, and was selected as one of Choice magazine’s outstanding academic titles for 2000.
In his capacity as Academy Historian at the New York Academy of Medicine, Dr. Warren directs the Academy’s Historical Collections, coordinates public programs in the history of medicine, and conducts research in the social history of medicine and public health. His current research project, tentatively titled “From Haven to Hazard: America’s Migration to the Great Indoors,” explores the links between Americans’ move to the indoors and changing disease patterns, as well as shifting attitudes about health, safety and security*not only physical safety, but also ideological, political, economic and cultural attitudes toward all manner of risks. He is also editing, with John Ward, a collection of essays by historians and epidemiologists on the history and practice of public health, to be published by Oxford University Press.