Chris M. Daley, PhD

Bio

Dr. Christine Makosky Daley is an applied medical anthropologist, mixed methodologist, and implementation scientist with a focus on innovations in community-based participatory research in marginalized communities to improve health equity. Prior to coming to Lehigh, she was at the University of Kansas Medical Center for 16 years, where she led creation of the Center for American Indian Community Health, serving as the Director for over a decade. Her research focused on reducing disparities in Indigenous communities in the United States through community interventions for healthy living, including tobacco cessation, weight control, cancer screening, improving indoor environmental health, and more. As a methodologist, she focused on numerous communities, including rural, urban safety-net, refugee, and children with medical complexity, among others. 

Since 2020, Dr. Daley’s research has begun to focus on the intersection of culture and medicine or biology as it relates to medical mysteries, including Morgellons Disease, Near-Death Experiences, spontaneous human combustion, and cases of demonic possession. She examines these from the perspectives of the patients, as well as medical providers and healers, including both allopathic providers and individuals practicing what is often called complementary and alternative medicine. In addition, her research examines the health implications of interactions with paranormal phenomena, such as ghost sickness and alien abduction. She is the co-host of Beyond the Human, a podcast dedicated to anthropological understandings of the paranormal.