Research – Nora Kenworthy, PhD

My work sits at the intersections of public health, anthropology, and politics. In both international and domestic contexts, I am particularly concerned with questions of who gets to have a voice in health initiatives, the forms that participation in health can take, and the political impacts of charity.

For the past decade, I have been studying the use of crowdfunding to address health crises in the United States, including the use of crowdfunding amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For Americans experiencing chronic and acute illnesses, fundraising through crowdfunding websites has become a popular method to pay for the extraordinary costs of health care and medication. Read more about my medical crowdfunding research here. My book on this topic, Crowded Out, is forthcoming in Spring 2024, from MIT Press. Much of my earlier (and ongoing) research explores the impacts of global health initiatives on diverse communities, and the politics of global health governance.

Cover of the book 'Crowded Out' by Nora Kenworthy cover of the book Mistreated, by Nora Kenworthy Cover of the book, 'Case Studies in Corporations and Global Health Governance'

Books

Read more about Crowded Out: The Real Costs of Crowdfunding Health Care, forthcoming spring 2024.

My first solo-authored book, Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho, examines how HIV and global health program expansion in Lesotho impacted democratic institutions and altered citizens’ political worlds. Read more about the book here.

I also co-edited Case Studies in Corporations and Global Health Governance: Impacts, Influence and Accountability with Kelley Lee (Simon Frasier University) and Ross MacKenzie (MacQuarie University) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

With Richard Parker, I co-edited the volume, HIV Scale-up and the Politics of Global Health (Routledge, 2015).

Journal issues:

Critical perspectives on the ‘end of AIDS.’ (With R. Parker and M. Thomann, 2018). Special section of Global Public Health.
Critical perspectives on US global health partnerships in Africa and beyond (With L. Thomas and J. Crane, 2018). Special issue of Medicine, Anthropology, Theory 5(2).
Crisis takes its toll: Transnational perspectives on austerity, health and wellbeing. (With M. Carney, 2017). Special section of Social Science & Medicine.
HIV scale-up and the politics of global health. (With R. Parker) Special double issue of Global Public Health 9(1-2). (2014).

Articles:

Kenworthy, N. Hops, E.*, and Hagopian, A. (2023). Mutual Aid Praxis Aligns Principles and Practice in Grassroots COVID-19 Responses Across the U.S. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 33(2): 115-144.
Jung, J-K., Kenworthy, N., and Park, H.* (2023). (Un)Mapping the Digital Landscape of Medical Crowdfunding: A Critical and Creative Geovisualization Pedagogy for Public Engagement. Livingmaps Review.
Davis, A., Carlisle, S. E, Kenworthy N. (2023). Racial and Gender Disparities in High-Earning Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns. Social Science & Medicine.
Kenworthy, N., Jung, J-K., and Hops, E. (2022). Struggling, Helping, and Adapting: Crowdfunding Motivations and Outcomes During the Early US COVID-19 Pandemic. Sociology of Health and Illness, 45(2): 298-316.
Jecker, N., Atuire, C., and Kenworthy, N. (2022). Realizing Ubuntu in Global Bioethics: An African Approach to Global Health Justice. Public Health Ethics, 15(3): 256-267.
Kenworthy, N. and Igra, M.* (2022). Medical Crowdfunding and Disparities in Health Care Access in the United States, 2016-2020. American Journal of Public Health, 112(3):491–498.
Zenone, M.*, Kenworthy, N. (2021). Pre-Emption Strategies to Block Taxes on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages: A Framing Analysis of Facebook Advertising in Support of Washington State Initiative-1634. Global Public Health 17(9):1854-1867.
Igra, M.*, Kenworthy, N., Luchsinger, C.*, and Jung, J-K. (2021). Crowdfunding as a Response to COVID-19: Increasing Inequities at a Time of Crisis. Social Science & Medicine 282 (August): 114105.

Kenworthy, N. (2021). Like a grinding stone: How crowdfunding platforms create, perpetuate, and value inequities. Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
Kenworthy, N., Koon, A., Mendenhall, E. (2021). On symbols and scripts: The politics of the American COVID-19 response. Global Public Health.
Kenworthy, N., Dong, Z., Montgomery, A., Fuller, E., Berliner, L. (2020). A cross-sectional study of social inequities in medical crowdfunding campaigns in the United States. PLOS One 15(3): e0229760.
Kenworthy, N. (2019). Crowdfunding and global health disparities: An exploratory conceptual and empirical analysis. Globalization and Health 15(s1): 71-84.
Kenworthy, N. (2018). Drone philanthropy: Global health crowdfunding and the anxious futures of partnership. Medicine, Anthropology, Theory 5(2): 168-187.
Gimbel, S., Chilundo, B., Kenworthy, N., Chapman, R., Inguane, C., Sherr, K., Citrin D., Pfeiffer, J. (2018). Donor data vacuuming: Audit culture and the use of data in global health partnerships. Medicine, Anthropology, Theory 5(2): 79-99.
Kenworthy, N., Thomann, M., & Parker, R. (2017). From a global crisis to the ‘end of AIDS’: New epidemics of signification. Global Public Health. Online advance, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2017.1365373.
Berliner, L. & Kenworthy, N. (2017). Producing a worthy illness: Personal crowdfunding amidst financial crisis. Social Science & Medicine, 187(August): 233-242.
Hallman, K., Kenworthy, N., Diers, J., Swan, N., Devnarian, B., & Mthembu, N. (2015). The shrinking world of girls at puberty: Violence and gender-divergent access to the public sphere among adolescents in South Africa. Global Public Health 10(3): 279-295.
Kenworthy, N. (2014). A manufactu(RED) ethics: Labor, HIV and the body in Lesotho’s “sweat-free” garment industry. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 28(4):459-479.
Kenworthy, N. (2014). Global health: The debts of gratitude. In special issue, “Debt,” eds. Rosalind Petchesky and Meena Alexander. Women’s Studies Quarterly 42 (1-2):69-85.
Kenworthy, N. (2014). Participation, decentralization, and déjà vu: Remaking democracy in response to AIDS? Global Public Health 9(1-2): 25-42.
Kenworthy, N. & Bulled, N. (2013). From modeling to morals: Imagining the future of HIV PrEP in Lesotho. Developing World Bioethics 13(2):70-78.
Kenworthy, N. (2012). Asylum’s asylum: Undocumented immigrants, belonging, and the space of exception at a state psychiatric center. Human Organization 71(2):123-134.

Book Chapters:

Kenworthy, N., Storeng, K., and Zenone, M.* (2023) The Global Technology Sector as a Commercial Determinant of Health. In Maani, N., Petticrew, M., and Galea, S., eds. The Commercial Determinants of Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 197-208.
Storeng, K. and Kenworthy, N. (2022) Global Health 2.0? Digital Technologies, Disruption, and Power. In Global Health Watch 6. New York: Bloomsbury, 105-127.

Kenworthy, N., Thomann, M., and Parker, R. (2019). ‘Ending AIDS’ or Scaling Down the Global AIDS Response? In Parker, R., and Garcia, J., eds. Routledge Handbook on the Politics of Global Health. New York: Routledge.
Kenworthy, N. & Parker, R. (2016). Anthropology of corporations and global health governance. In Hawkins, B. & Lee, K., eds. Researching corporations and global health governance: An interdisciplinary guide. Rowman & Littlefield.
Kenworthy, N. (2016). Governing through production: A public-private partnership’s impacts and dissolution in Lesotho’s garment industry. In Kenworthy, N., MacKenzie, R., & Lee, K. Case studies on corporations and global health governance: Impacts, influence and accountability. Rowman & Littlefield.
Kenworthy, N. (2016) Unexpected asylums, tenuous futures: Held in abeyance at a state psychiatric hospital. In Criminalizing the immigrant other: Lived experiences in a transnational world. Rick Furman, Greg Lamphear, and Douglas Epps, eds. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kenworthy, N. (2015). Participation, decentralization, and déjà vu: Remaking democracy in response to AIDS? In Kenworthy, N. and Parker, R., eds. HIV Scale-Up and the Politics of Global Health. New York: Routledge. (Re-print of 2014 article in Global Public Health)

Commentaries:

Zenone, M.*, Kenworthy, N., & Maani, N. (2022). The Social Media Industry as a Commercial Determinant of Health. International Journal of Health Policy and Management.
Zenone, M.*, Kenworthy, N., & Barbic, S. (2021). The Paradoxical Relationship Between Health Promotion and the Social Media Industry. Health Promotion Practice.

Kenworthy, N., Thomas, L., & Crane, J. (2018). Critical perspectives on global health partnerships in Africa and beyond. Medicine, Anthropology, Theory 5(2): ii-ix.
Kenworthy, N., Thomann, M., & Parker, R. (2017, epub ahead of print). Critical perspectives on the ‘end of AIDS.’ Global Public Health.
Basu, S., Carney, M. and Kenworthy, N. (2017). Ten years after the financial crisis: the long reach of austerity and its global impacts on health. Social Science & Medicine, 187(August): 203-207.
Kenworthy, N. & Parker, R. (2014). Introduction: HIV scale-up and the politics of global health. Global Public Health 9(1-2): 1-6.
From revolution to rights in South Africa: Social movements, NGOs and popular politics after apartheid (Book Review). Global Public Health, 7(6), 661-663. (2012).
Boundaries of contagion: How ethnic politics have shaped government responses to AIDS (Book Review). Global Public Health, 5(4): 444-446. (2010).

Popular Press and Online Publications:

Kenworthy, N. (2022). What a Decade of ‘Ending AIDS’ Can Teach us about the Politics of Pandemic End-Games. The Collective Blog. 14 March.
Kenworthy, N. and Igra, M.* (2022). Crowdfunding Isn’t Enough in a Crisis. Scientific American. 4 Feb. *reprinted in print issue of Scientific American, July 2022.

Kenworthy, N. (2020). Crowdfunding is an imperfect weapon against the pandemic. The Washington Post. 2 April.
Kenworthy, N. and Igra, M.* (2021). Crowdfunding Fails Most of Those in Need. Los Angeles Times. 20 July.
Fogelman, C., Kenworthy, N., and Aerni-Flessner, J. (2017). Overpopulation is not Lesotho’s biggest problem. Mail & Guardian. 6 July.
Kenworthy, N., Clarke Dillman, J., and Katz, A. (2016). Want a better higher education system? Raise taxes. Seattle Times. 23 May.
Hallman, K., Kenworthy, N., Diers, J., Swan, N., and Devnarian, B. (2013). The contracting world of girls at puberty: Violence and gender-divergent access to the public sphere among adolescents in South Africa. Poverty, Gender, and Youth Working Paper No. 25. New York: Population Council.
When the ward is your mooring: The human and economic costs of long-term acute care for undocumented immigrants in the US. AccessDenied. 16 Jan 2012.
The psychiatric hospital as safe house? Strange asylum for undocumented immigrants with mental health needs. AccessDenied. 4 Jan 2012.