Benjamin F. Crabtree is an applied medical anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Family Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He received a master of arts degree in applied anthropology from the University of South Florida and a Ph.D. degree in medical anthropology from the University of Connecticut. He was deeply influenced by his two tours as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, first with the World Health Organization’s smallpox eradication program in Ethiopia and then in Korean tuberculosis control, where he observed firsthand the critical roles of public health and primary medical care.

In 2023, Crabtree published a narrative nonfiction account of his experiences in Ethiopia, titled Needle in a Haystack: Searching for the Worlds Last Cases of Smallpox in Ethiopia. He has been intensely engaged in research to enhance the quality of primary care in the United States, Australia, Japan, and Canada. As both a researcher and cancer survivor, he has a deep appreciation of the day-to-day reality faced by patients, clinicians, and staff member as they negotiate what he calls “an often-dysfunctional health system.”

Crabtree has contributed to over 250 peer reviewed publications and 25 books/book chapters, and he has served as principal investigator on over 20 grants, including five National Institutes of Health-funded R01s and a National Cancer Institute (NCI) senior investigator award (K05). Most recently, Crabtree was PI on two NCI R01 grants and is the MPI on a current NCI R01 grant that uses ethnographic and mixed methods to develop, implement, and evaluate interventions for cancer survivors in primary care. A recently released SAGE textbook he coauthored, Doing Qualitative Research, 3rd Edition, provides detailed instructions on how to conduct both qualitative data collection and data analysis and interpretation in primary care settings.