PhD, Anthropology, Harvard University, 2007.

Accepting new advisees

Specialties

Medical anthropology, health care worker wellbeing (burnout and moral injury), health policy, insurance, financialization, administrative burdens, disasters, US imperialism, Latin America and the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, the United States

As a medical anthropologist who studies health systems, my research analyzes how and why policies often fail to achieve their aims. I do this by listening closely to the wisdom of those whose knowledge and expertise is rarely appreciated by policymakers: uninsured people, health care providers in disaster zones, and families struggling to pay their medical bills. My work identifies policies that drive health inequity (such as uncare policies, the fanning of racial resentment, and the implementation of time consuming and stigmatizing administrative burdens) as well as the strategies that redress inequity and create the conditions for more flourishing lives. I have a longstanding interest in understanding how market-based reforms to social welfare programs affect access to services, ideas about government, and inequality.

I recently completed a collaborative project on the experiences of health care workers in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria that was funded by the National Science Foundation and explored how working through multiple disasters shaped the ethics of care of frontline providers. One of the main findings from this project was that providers experience moral injury when financial constraints, understaffing and lack of resources prevented them from delivering care to the highest standards in line with their professional training. This work built from my previous research in Puerto Rico on privatization and managed care to explore how debt servicing, financialization, and colonialism have destabilized the health care system and contributed to provider out-migration.

I am currently working on a 5-year (2024 – 2029) multimethod collaborative project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality titled: Reducing Uninsurance by Addressing Administrative Burdens in the Health Insurance Marketplaces (AHRQ Prime Award No. 1R01HS30083-01). This project documents the experiences of people seeking health insurance coverage and seeks to understand why accessing government services can be so onerous. I run an active research program with opportunities for UVA undergraduate and graduate students to get involved. To learn more about joining the research team, send me an email.

Selected Publications

Books

Mulligan, Jessica and Heide Castañeda, editors. 2018. Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the United States. NY: NYU Press.

Mulligan, Jessica. 2014. Unmanageable Care: An Ethnography of Health Care Privatization in Puerto Rico. NY: NYU Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

Adriana Garriga-López, Jessica Mulligan, Alex Ramos, Litzy Bahena, Jailene Vázquez, Mauricio Guillén, Paola Lazu Báez, Tiffany De Varona, Marialejandra López Torres, and Gabriela Marrero Serrano. 2024. Cansados del desastre: Agotamiento y daño moral entre trabajadores de la salud en Puerto Rico [Tired of Disaster: Burnout and Moral Injury Among Health Care Workers in Puerto Rico.] Cuadernos de Investigación. Cuaderno 29. Instituto de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarios, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Cayey.

Mulligan, Jessica. 2023. Fractured Insurance Families: Securing Care and Navigating Financialized Social Protections. Journal of Cultural Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2023.2246985

Mulligan, Jessica and Madeline Weil*. 2022. A Eulogy for Jane Robinson: A Social Autopsy of Uncare Policies. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 36(1):27-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12664  

Mulligan, Jessica and Adriana Garriga-López. 2021. Forging Compromiso after the Storm: Activism as Ethics of Care among Health Care Workers in Puerto Rico. Critical Public Health 31(2): 214-225. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2020.1846683

Mulligan, Jessica and Emily K Brunson. 2020. Structures of Resentment: On Feeling—and Being—Left Behind by Health Care Reform. Cultural Anthropology 35(2):317–343,  https://doi.org/10.14506/ca35.2.10

Mulligan, Jessica. 2016. Insurance Accounts: The Cultural Logics of Health Care Financing. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 30(1):37-61. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12157

Amy Dao and Jessica Mulligan. 2016. Towards an Anthropology of Insurance and Health Reform: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 30(1):5-17. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12271

Levine, Deborah and Jessica Mulligan. 2015. Overutilization, Over Utilized. Health Politics, Policy and Law 40(2): 421-437. DOI: 10.1215/03616878-2882281