Alejandro Cerón

Alejandro Cerón is an anthropologist interested in the social and cultural aspects of health, especially sociocultural epidemiology, public health practice, and the right to health. Prior to earning a doctoral degree in anthropology (University of Washington, 2013), he graduated as a physician and Master in Public Health in 2000 and 2006, respectively, from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. After joining DU in 2013, he started incorporating short ethnographic projects in some of his classes, like Applied Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Medical Anthropology, usually involving a community partner, and with the educational goal of bringing together experiential learning and community-engaged courses. Through this modality, Alejandro and his students produced reports on: barriers and facilitators for mental health among Latinos for a community clinic in Lakewood, CO; the needs of Latinx people in a Denver neighborhood for a grassroots organization; perceptions about mental health among young men of color for an inter-agency coalition in Denver; an assessment of the challenges faced by students, staff and faculty with young children at DU; an assessment of the perceptions about work-life balance among DU students, staff and faculty; and an analysis of a global initiative promoting kidney transplants, for a consultant at the Guatemalan office of the Pan American Health Organization. His scholarly work involves long-standing collaborations with the following organizations based in Guatemala: Centro de Estudios para la Equidad y Gobernanza en los Sistemas de Salud (CEGSS), Fundación para el Niño Enfermo Renal (FUNDANIER), and Red de Acceso a Medicamentos de Guatemala (RedMedGua), as well as short-term collaborative projects with other organizations. In 2019, he cofounded the DU Ethnography Lab (DUEL), aimed at catalyzing collaborations among students, faculty, and community partners.