Dr. Shannon Guillot-Wright, PhD

Shannon Guillot-Wright, PhD is Vice Chair of Research and Health Policy in the Department of Family Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). She also serves as faculty in UTMB’s Center for Violence Prevention. Her program of research focuses on structural violence, with a particular emphasis on the use of research evidence to foster equitable policies. She has conducted photo-ethnographic fieldwork with Filipino migrant seafarers (people who live and work at sea) to understand the systemic and structural production of health inequities as well as an ethnography exploring the use of research evidence in the U.S. Congress. Currently, she is conducting fieldwork with (im)migrant fishermen on the Gulf Coast, studying how work is a structural and social determinant of health. Dr. Guillot-Wright has published on structural violence, including social determinants of health, health policy, migrant health, and racial/ethnic health inequities in international and national journals and received research support from the CDC, Texas Medical Center's Health Policy Institute, the State of Texas - Office of the Governor, SW Ag Center, and numerous national Foundations. She was a selected artist for the National Academy of Medicine's Visualize Health Equity gallery and her work has been featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Houston Public Radio, Texas Monthly, TIME Magazine, and Houston Chronicle. She sits on the American Public Health Association’s Action Board as well as the Advisory Board for the Children’s Defense Fund – Texas. Dr. Guillot-Wright has her PhD in the Medical Humanities from UTMB, MA in Human Rights from Columbia University, and completed her postdoctoral training at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at Penn State.

Sub-specialities:

Precarious employment;
(Im)migrant workers health;
Structural violence and the social determinants of health;
Health policy research;
Racial and ethnic health inequities