Richard Del RioVisiting Assistant Professor

Biography

I am a historian of the United States with an interest in the political economy of healthcare. My primary focus is on the broad influence of the drug industry and the transformative power pharmaceutical products can have over the culture, institutions and interrelationships of the American people. I was formerly director of operations at the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy and served as co-host of “For the Medical Record," the official podcast of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine.

Before joining the History Department at Franklin & Marshall, I was a research associate within the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where I was finishing mixed-methods research on the historical relationship between pricing schemes for proprietary medicines and the development of criminal drug policy in Chicago. Frequently, the problems of the legal and illegal drug markets are treated as distinct or segregated issues. I aim to contribute to discussions of drug access and pricing by bringing scholarly attention to the interrelated history industry boardrooms share with “Dope Town” corners, and show that the problems harm-reduction policy seeks to mitigate have unintended origins in the history of pharmacy’s early professionalization. For a preliminary reading on the subject of my larger book project please consult my article “The Drug War Dialectic in Early Twentieth-Century Chicago.” The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 34 (2): 297–319. https://doi.org/10.1086/710641.

Education

Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2018

Research

History of the United States

International Pharmaceutical Markets

Drug Development/Regulation

Entheogenic Drugs

Healing Cultures

Healthcare Finance

The U.S. Social Safety Net

Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement

Note: In addition to the abovementioned subjects, I am interested in working with students researching the history of drugs from any academic discipline, geographic scope and time period.

Courses

PBH 251: Intro to Public Health

HIS 137: American History, 1491-1865

HIS 138: The United States and the Modern World

HIS 372: Topics in U.S. History

HIS 471: The History of the American Drug Market