Kathleen Bachynski
Education
- B.A., University of Michigan
- M.P.H., University of Michigan, School of Public Health
- Ph.D., Columbia University
Teaching Interests
My approach to teaching is guided by the interdisciplinary nature of public health, a field made richer by a broad range of perspectives across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. I am committed to placing public health issues in historical, cultural and scientific context. I believe this approach is essential to understanding the complex nature of contemporary public health challenges. It also enables students to build stronger connections among varied public health topics, other academic disciplines and the experiences that they bring to the classroom.
My teaching strategies prioritize giving students experience in interpreting primary and secondary sources with a variety of analytical tools and constructing arguments based on an appreciation of a diversity of perspectives and complex evidence. I want students to gain a critical understanding of the range of factors involved in influencing the nature and scope of public health challenges. My goal is for students to leave the classroom more empowered to address socially relevant and intellectually demanding public health questions, with sharper critical research and writing skills that can be applied to a wide range of endeavors of their choosing.
Research and Scholarship
When and how do people address brain injuries in sports as a public health issue, rather than seeing them as inevitable or as bad luck? Why do some communities require young cyclists to wear helmets, but not others? Most of my research focuses on injury prevention, sports safety and youth health. I am particularly interested in studying when and how injury risks become framed as random accidents versus preventable public health issues; the social contexts that inform changing medical and public health evidence about those risks; and how social and cultural forces such as race, gender, class and mass media have shaped past and present debates over how to prevent injuries.
So far, my biggest project has been completing a book on the history of debates over youth tackle football safety, No Game for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis (November 2019). Some other topics I’ve studied include pseudomedicine for sports concussions, bike helmets and overuse injuries. My overarching goal is to contribute to scholarly understandings of the scope and possibilities of public health approaches, in order to ultimately improve the health and well-being of the public.
- CUE: Playing Through It? Sports and Public Health
- Introduction to Global Health
- Issues in Public Health
- Public Health Independent Study/Research - How Soccer Based Educati
- Public Health Independent Study/Research: Ballet Injuries
- Public Health Internship - PHAM
- Spc Top: Public Health in the Francophone World
- Spc: Vaccination Nation: Historical & Public Health Perspectives
- Special Topic: Ethics of Public Health
Faculty Rising Scholar Award
- Bachynski, K. “When Fathers Beam and Mothers Wince”: Narratives of “Worried Mothers” in Youth Football Safety Debates. Journal of Sport History 51, no. 2 (2024): 46-49.
- Clissold A. and Bachynski K. (2024). NFL’s dangerous strategies of marketing football to youth: shades of big tobacco. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2024.2365400
- Bachynski K, Castrucci B, Choo E, et al. It’s time to redouble and refocus our efforts to fight covid, not retreat. British Medical Journal 2022; 379. doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o2423
- Bachynski K. Enforcing Safety? Football Helmet Standards and Products Liability, 1960s-1970s. Governing Safety: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Injuries and the State. Johns Hopkins University History of Medicine Department and Center for Injury Research and Policy. [Virtual Conference.] April 10, 2022.
- “A Problem That Cries Out For Standards: Football Helmets, Conceptions of Risk, and the National Commission on Product Safety, 1961-1970.” In: The Palgrave Handbook of Sport, Politics and Harm, ed. Stephen Wagg and Allyson M. Pollock. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
- Bachynski K. Public Health Approaches to Sport History. Journal of Sport History 48, no. 3 (2021): 397-413.
- Bachynski K. No Excuses: A Brief History of Playing Through Risk in College Football. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 49; 3 (2021): 378-384.
- Bachynski K. Competitive Youth Sports, Pediatricians, and Gender in the 1950s. In: Pink and Blue: Gender, Culture, and the Health of Children, ed. Elena Conis, Sandra Eder and Aimee Madeiros. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021.
- Atkins S, Banerjee AT, Bachynski K, et al. Using the COVID-19 pandemic to reimagine global health teaching in high-income countries. BMJ Global Health 2021;6:e005649.
- Bachynski K. Examining Social Structures and Cultural Norms that Influence Brain Injury Reporting in College Football. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 48 (2020): 315-317.
- Bachynski K and Bateman-House A. Mandatory Bicycle Helmet Laws in the United States: Origins, Context and Controversies. American Journal of Public Health 110; 8 (2020): 1198-1204.
- Bachynski K. #MeToo, Larry Nassar, and Sexual Abuse in Youth Sports. In: Sports and Politics: Commodification, Capitalist Exploitation, and Political Agency, ed. Frank Jacob. De Gruyter 2020: 143-166.
- Bachynski KE. Too Rough for Bare Heads: The Adoption of Helmets and Masks in North American Ice Hockey, 1959-1979. Sport History Review 51, no. 1 (2020): 25-45. https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2019-0026.
- Bachynski KE and Smoliga JM. Pseudomedicine for sports concussions in the USA. Lancet Neurology. Published online ahead of print (July 3, 2019). https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laneur/PIIS1474-4422(19)30250-9.pdf
- Bachynski KE. The duty of their elders: Doctors, coaches, and the framing of youth football’s health risks, 1950s-1960s. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences 74; 2 (2019): 167-191.
- Bateman-House A and Bachynski KE. Putting all-ages bicycle helmet ordinances into context. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 47;2 (2019): 291-293.
- Binney ZO and Bachynski KE. Estimating the prevalence at death of CTE neuropathology among professional football players. Neurology 92;1 (2019): 43-45.
- Bachynski KE and Goldberg DS. Time out: NFL conflicts of interest with public health efforts to prevent TBI. Injury Prevention 24;3 (2018): 180-184.
- Friesen P, Saul B, Kearns L, Bachynski KE, and Caplan A. Overuse injuries in youth sports: Legal and social responsibility. Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport 28;2 (2018): 151-169.
- Bachynski KE. Tolerable risks? Physicians and youth tackle football. New England Journal of Medicine 374;5 (2016): 405-407.
Prehealth Faculty Advisory Committee
Public Health
Public Health Program
Contact: kathleenbachynski@muhlenberg.edu