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Institute for Bioethics logo
Kristen Ann Ehrenberger

Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, MD, PhD

Director of the Program in Health Humanities and Social Sciences (HHumSS)

Professional Statement

Kristen Ehrenberger is a historian of medicine and a body scholar who studies the creation and circulation of knowledge and specializes in interdisciplinarity. She joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2020 and was appointed Director of the Program in Health Humanities and Social Sciences (HHumSS) in 2025. She completed a PhD in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of the dual-degree Medical Scholars Program and came to Pittsburgh for a combined residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics in 2016.

Her most recent book, The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Body in Modern Germany (JHU Press, 2026), argues that the “natural experiment” of food shortages and malnutrition during and after World War I provided a laboratory for the application of the newer knowledge of nutrition and fostered the scalar thinking that bound Germans into one social body that literally and metaphorically ate and died together.

She is the inaugural Associate Editor for history of medicine at the Journal of General Internal Medicine. She holds leadership positions in the American Association of the History of Medicine, the C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society, and H-Nutrition (H-Net). Every year she runs an elective for senior medical students on nutrition across the lifespan. She is a co-creator of Teaching Rounds, a social media project that provides clinical pearls outside the clinical setting.

Dr. Ehrenberger is Director of the Progressive Evaluation & Referral Center (PERC), a unique primary care home for adults with developmental disability, intellectual disability, and/or technology dependence since childhood. Through the Adult Developmental Research Consortium, she is a co-primary investigator of a national survey of clinics providing primary care to this population. She is passionate about creating connections with pediatricians, dentists, and adult specialists to smooth the transition into adult health care.

Appointments

  • Associate Professor of Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine School of Medicine
  • Associate Professor of Pediatrics Department of Pediatrics School of Medicine
  • Director Progressive Evaluation & Referral Center (PERC)
  • Director of the Program in Health Humanities and Social Sciences (HHumSS) Institute for Bioethics

Education and Training

  • Internal Medicine–Pediatrics Residency, UPMC, 2020
  • MD, University of Illinois, 2016
  • PhD, History, University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign, 2014
  • MA, History, University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign, 2007
  • BA, History, Washington University in St. Louis

Professional Interests in Bioethics

Representative Publications

  1. Ehrenberger KA, Mendoza-Cervantes D, Baldwin JL. Structural ableism and healthcare transition for adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Journal of General Internal Medicine. [forthcoming]

  2. Ehrenberger KA. The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Body in Modern Germany. Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026. URL: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53914/politics-table.

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  3. Ehrenberger KA. Oh SNAP, the biopolitics of soup kitchens and food insecurity. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2026 Feb 26, doi:10.1007/s11606-026-10281-1.

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  4. Barr J, Doroshaw D, Olszewski T, Ehrenberger KA. Who wins? Professional identity and the American Association for the History of Medicine’s early career scholar awards. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 2026 Jan;81(1):111-20, doi:10.1093/jhmas/jraf018.

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  5. Ehrenberger KA, George AX. Introduction: medicine’s two bodies. In Medical(ized) Bodies in the German-Speaking World, a special issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Ehrenberger KA and George AX, eds. 2023 Feb;59(1):1-11, doi:10.3138/seminar.59.1.1.

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  6. Anastasio TJ, Ehrenberger KA, Watson P, Zhang W. Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation: Analogous Processes on Different Levels. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2012.

Recent Funding

  • University of Pittsburgh Division of General Internal Medicine Clinician-Educator Grant, “Hungry for Nutrition in Undergraduate Medical Education: An Elective Course in Knowledge, Skills, and History­­­­­­­­­­,” Primary Investigator, 2022

Awards and Honors

  • Invited Lecturer, Missouri Southern State University Honors Program, September 2026

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