Sara Snitselaar

Sara Snitselaar is a medical sociologist.  She received a BA in Anthropology from St. Mary’s College of California and an MA in Gender Studies from Central European University. Sara earned her PhD in Sociology from Boston University in 2024 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago’s Center for Health and the Social Sciences. Broadly, her work asks questions related to science and medicine, health disparities, culture, markets, and emergent field processes within the US healthcare system. Her dissertation, “Closing the ‘Endlessly Revolving Door?’ Functional Medicine and Professional Jurisdiction,” examines the emergent field of functional medicine by tracing the epistemological tensions, clinical ambiguities, and professional divisions that arise when functional medicine physicians engage in practices that compete with their medical training. Sara received the 2025 Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology award for this work. Forthcoming publications drawn from the dissertation consider the strategies that functional medicine physicians use to attract and maintain clients and how they legitimate clinical approaches that diverge from clinical guidelines. Sara is also passionate about teaching and mentoring students. She has taught at Boston University, Boston College, Harvard University, and Harvard Medical School.