Adina Nack

Author of the column Bedside Manners which focuses on applying the sociological imagination to medical topics, with a special focus on sexual and reproductive health.

Adina Nack PhD, has been researching and writing about health, sexuality and stigma since 1994: starting as an outreach educator for Girls, Inc. of Orange County, CA and continuing through her doctoral work at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Author of the book Damaged Goods? Women Living with Incurable STDs, Nack has published articles and essays on topics including STD stigma, sex education, and HIV/AIDS. She has written for Ms. Magazine, her academic articles have been reprinted in over a dozen anthologies, and she has won awards for her research, teaching, activism, and public policy work.

As a medical sociologist, sex educator, and sexual health researcher, Nack has been seen and heard in MTV documentaries, CBS’s The Doctors, local and regional newspapers and magazines, and interviewed on a variety of radio programs, including NPR and FOX News Radio shows. She gives talks and workshops to a variety of audiences: e.g., college students, national academic associations, and national youth pastor conferences. Always focused on how academic research can inform real-life solutions to social problems, she addresses a range of topics: including how to have better sex in a world with STDs, the personal and public health implications of mixing morality with medicine, HPV vaccines, pop culture, and youth culture.

In the past, Nack has directed the University of Colorado’s Sexual Health Education Program, been a professor at the University of Maine, and served as a reviewer for top academic journals and the National Science Foundation. Currently she is a tenured Professor of Sociology at California Lutheran University, where she directed their Gender and Women’s Studies Program and currently serves as Director of their Center for Equality and Justice and Chair of the Sociology Department. Follow her on twitter @adinanack and visit her online at www.adinanack.com.

Past Posts

Catheters, Slurs, and Pick-Up Lines

Giving Thanks for the Wisdom of Elders

Can We Have the HPV Vaccine Without the Sexism and the Homophobia?

Sociologists Shed New Light on Self-Injury

Medical Care or Moral Surveillance?

Respect and Protect the Pelvic Floor

Activists’ Media Work — Likely to Not Work

O Canada! You Took a Stand on Gardasil for Thee (and for all of us ‘older’ women)

Fallen Gridiron Warriors

Peeing When You Laugh is Not Funny, Neither is Misrepresenting Research

I’ll take Zombies over Racists, Rapists and Wife-Beaters…any day

From Childbirth Educator to Doula and Back Again — Trends in the History of Birth Advocacy and Education

New Blood, a New View of Menstrual Activism

BP, American Pimp

Heartbreaking Choices

In a time of Recession, Feminist Fashionistas Unite!

Something Stinks about this GlaxoSmithKline Ad

Why This Feminist Cares about Men’s Health

New Pap Smear Guidelines – No, Thank You (Part II)

Gender & “Constrained” Health Choices

New Pap Smear Guidelines – No, Thank You (Part I)

Gender-blurring Gen Y & Gen Z Making Headlines

Wishing Everyone a Happy, Safe and Feminist Halloween!

You Don’t Need a Cervix to Benefit from the “Cervical Cancer” Vaccine

HPV, Stress & the “Inner Game”

The Beauty Myth: Then and Now

The “Cervical Cancer” Vaccine, STD Stigma & AdAdvthe Truth about HPV