Sakena Abedin, MD, PhD

Sakena Abedin, MD PhD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and a Lecturer in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine.

Dr. Abedin is a practicing primary care pediatrician who sees patients at Fair Haven Community Healthcare. She is also a historian who studies 20th century American medicine.

Dr. Abedin’s research focuses on medicine’s encounters with the social world and the various ways in which ‘social’ problems become medicalized in clinical research and practice. Her dissertation is about the history of clinical and social science research on patient behavior, specifically, patients’ compliance with their dodctor’s advice.

Her teaching interests include the history of healthcare for underserved populations and the history of race and disease in American medicine.