Rachel Niehuus, MD, PhD
PGY Level
Clinical PGY5, Department of Surgery, Emory University School of Medicine
Additional Title
Associate Faculty, Department of Women and Gender Studies, Emory University
Biography
Rachel comes to Emory from the University of California, San Francisco, where she graduated from the joint MD-PhD program. In medical school, Rachel was heavily involved in public and global health education at UCSF; she also served as the interim Executive Director of a Partners in Health-affiliated NGO in rural Liberia and assisted with programmatic aspects of a hospital-based violence prevention program in San Francisco.
Between 2009 and 2014, Rachel pursued a PhD in anthropology at the University of California, San Francisco. Her dissertation, entitled "'We live in war': An Ambivalent Everyday in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo," explores the ways in which the quotidian experiences of hunger, poverty, and armed and sexual violence shape the meaning and practice of care in a rural, war-affected region of eastern Congo. In 2016, Rachel finished her degrees at UCSF and happily drove across the country with her dog and her succulents to start general surgery residency at Emory.
During her first three clinical years, Rachel pursued several electives in rural and global surgery and served as an ambassador in ACS's Operation Giving Back program in Hawassa, Ethiopia. In July 2019, she began a two-year research sabbatical aimed at expanding her research and teaching portfolios. Over the past two years, she has conducted a team-based, mixed-methods study on the health effects of the 10th Ebola epidemic in DRC; taught several graduate-level courses in anthropology and social medicine; revised her dissertation into a book manuscript; in a team of three, redesigned a hospital-based violence intervention program for Grady Memorial Hospital; and spearheaded the development of an curriculum on antiracism in the Department of Surgery.
After she finishes clinical training, Rachel envisions a career split between acute care surgery, graduate-level teaching, and team-based ethnographic research. On the weekends, Rachel enjoys getting outside and learning about the nonhuman world. Of all of her activities and achievements, she is most proud of—and most fulfilled by—her queer family and her role as a mother.
Education
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MD, University of California, San Francisco, 2016
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PhD, Medical Anthropology, University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley, 2014
Honors and Awards
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Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society Inductee
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UCSF's 2016 Nominee: CGS Distinguished Dissertation Award
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Graduate Division Fellowship, UCSF, 2011-2012, 2012-2013, 2013-2014
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Andrew V. White and Florence W. White Dissertation Fellowship, 2013-2014
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Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, Swahili, UC Berkeley, 2011-2012
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Andrew and Mary Thompson Rocca Dissertation Scholarship, UC Berkeley, 2010, 2012
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Olympic Trials Qualifier, marathon, 2012
Current Organizational Memberships
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Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Society
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American Anthropological Association
Clinical Interests
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General surgery
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Trauma surgery
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Critical care
Research Interests
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Medical anthropology
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Care and intimacy
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Phenomenology
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Affect theory
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Racial health disparities
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Gun violence and war
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Feminist and queer theory
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Global surgical education
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Sub-Saharan Africa