This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
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Published: April 19, 2012

Ann McElroy, associate professor of anthropology, has received the Society for Applied Anthropology’s 2012 Sol Tax Distinguished Service Award in recognition of “long-term and truly distinguished service to the Society.”

The award, which was presented to McElroy during the 2012 annual meeting of the SfAA, was established to honor the memory and career of Sol Tax, an internationally renowned University of Chicago anthropologist who organized anthropology as a global discipline and helped establish the field of “action anthropology,” an approach in which researchers work to help solve social problems.

McElroy joined the UB faculty in 1971 as a specialist in psychological anthropology and arctic ethnology. Her research expanded to the emerging field of medical anthropology, and in 1979, she co-authored “Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective,” now in its fifth edition.

With her fellow UB faculty members, McElroy developed a series of applied research and training programs, including Research Careers in Anthropology, an MS/PhD track in anthropology and social epidemiology, and an MA concentration in applied medical anthropology.

A member of the SfAA since 1976 and a Sustaining Fellow since 2001, McElroy coordinated a health network as part of the SfAA Committee on Regional and Special Interest Groups and Affiliations, chaired the national organizing meeting of the Resource Group in Health and Anthropology, and co-organized and co-chaired the Health and Anthropology Network symposium “Knowledge Utilization in the Health Policy Process.” This symposium led to the publication of “Making Our Research Useful: Case Studies in the Utilization of Anthropological Knowledge” (1989).