Research Overview

Interests: History of Medicine and Health Policy

Mical Raz, MD, PhD, MSHP, completed her medical training at Tel Aviv University, from where she also received a PhD in history of medicine. Before moving to the US for a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, she worked at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and volunteered with Physicians for Human Rights. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital in 2015, followed by a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a practicing hospitalist at URMC at Strong Memorial Hospital, and is board certified in internal medicine.

She is the author of The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery (University of Rochester 2013), which was awarded the Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Career Development Award. Her second book, What's Wrong with the Poor? Race, Psychiatry and the War on Poverty (UNC 2013), was a 2015 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Her third book Abusive Policies: How the American Child Welfare System Lost its Way was published in late 2020. Her current interests including child welfare reform and the movement to abolish child protective services. 

Selected Op-Eds and Popular Writing

• Raz M, “ Family Separation Doesn’t Just Happen at the Border,” Made By History, Washington Post, January 30, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/30/family-separation-doesnt-just-happen-border/
• Raz, M “What We Get Wrong About the Poverty Gap In Education,” Made by History, Washington Post, July 2, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/07/02/what-we-get-wrong-about-the-poverty-gap-in-education/
• Raz, M “More Mandatory Reporting Won’t Keep Children Safe From Predators” Made by History, Washington Post, May 1 ,2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/05/01/more-mandatory-reporting-wont-keep-children-safe-from-predators/
• Raz, M and Doroshow, D. “Wordsworth Case Shows it's Time to Rethink 'Treatment' for Juveniles, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 3, 2016. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20161103_Commentary__Wordsworth_case_shows_it_s_time_to_rethink__treatment__for_juveniles.html
• Raz, M. “DHS Must Rethink Care of Children and Families”, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 2016. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160916_Commentary__DHS_must_rethink_care_of_children_and_families.html

Graduate Research Fields

I offer the following fields for graduate research: History of Psychiatry, History of Public Health, Child Welfare. For more information on our MA and PhD programs, see our graduate program page.

I am accepting new graduate student advisees for our MA and PhD programs.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• HIST 203:  Raising America’s Future: Childhood, Health and the Formation of American Social Policy, Syllabus
• HIST 242/242W:  Unequal, Unjust: 100 Years of Racism in American Public Health , Syllabus
• HIST 373W/473:  Politics and Policies in the U.S. Health Care System, Syllabus
• HIST 374W/474:  Pandemics, Politics and Policies in the US, 1918-2020, Syllabus
• PHLT 116:  Introduction to the U.S. Health System, Syllabus

Selected Publication Covers

Selected Publications

• Doroshow, D, Gambino M, and Raz, M, "New Directions in the Historiography of Psychiatry,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2019 Jan 1;74(1):57-84.
• Raz M. and Beatty, B., “Replacing the "Word Gap" with Non-stigmatizing Approaches to Early Literacy and Language Building,” forthcoming, Pediatrics 2018;142(6), e20181992.
• Raz, M. “Psychiatrists and the Transformation of Juvenile Justice in Philadelphia, 1965-72”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2018 Volume 73, Issue 4: 437–463.
• Raz, M. “Lessons from History: Parents Anonymous and Child Abuse Prevention Policy,” Pediatrics December, 2017, 140(6).
• Raz, M. “Unintended Consequences of Expanded Mandatory Reporting Laws,” Pediatrics, April 2017, 139 (4), 2016-3511.
• Raz, M. Treating Addiction or Reducing Crime? Methadone Maintenance and Drug Policy under the Nixon Administration, Journal of Policy History, 2017, 29(1): 58–86
• Raz, M. Deprived of Touch: How Maternal and Sensory Deprivation Theory Converged in Shaping Early Debates over Autism, History of the Human Sciences, 2014, 27(2): 75-96.
• Raz, M. The Deprivation Riots: Psychiatry as Politics in the 1960s, Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 2013, 21(6):345-50.
• Raz, Mical. The Lobotomy Letters: the Making of American Psychosurgery. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015. http://www.urpress.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14161
• Raz, Mical. Whats Wrong with the Poor?: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty. Place of publication not identified: Univ Of North Carolina Pr, 2016.