Dr. Christina Getrich is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist whose research examines the health, well-being, and incorporation of structurally marginalized immigrants in the United States. She explores the lived and embodied experiences of U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices to determine how immigrants, their children, and advocates maneuver to fight for well-being, inclusion, and justice. Dr. Getrich has been conducting research for 25 years in community- and clinic-based settings with Latinx immigrants in the Southwest and immigrants of diverse national origins in Maryland.

Since 2016, Dr. Getrich has been conducting longitudinal research on the health and well-being of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in the D.C. Metropolitan region with UMD graduate and undergraduate anthropology students. Her forthcoming book, Everyday Activists: Undocumented Immigrants’ Quest for Justice and Well-Being (New York University Press, 2025) examines how DACA recipients’ protracted legal status precarity has produced forms of suffering that have over time tempered the program’s beneficial impact. Yet in response to this precarity, DACA recipients are forging political inclusion in the everyday by strategically deploying navigational capital and engaging in everyday activism in solidarity with other immigrants. Everyday Activists documents the harmful effects of precarious legal status on DACA recipients’ health, but also how DACA recipients have cultivated resilience strategies for negotiating uncertainty and maintaining well-being.

This research builds on Dr. Getrich's long-standing interest in immigrant young adults who live in mixed-status families and communities. Her first book, Border Brokers: Children of Mexican Immigrants Navigating U.S. Society, Laws, and Politics (University of Arizona Press, 2019) is a longitudinal examination of the children of Mexican immigrants who grew up in mixed-status families living in the San Diego-Tijuana borderlands. Border Brokers highlights the deleterious effects of immigration policies and enforcement practices on their families’ configurations, economic prospects, spatial mobility, stability and security, and health and well-being. Yet her research demonstrates that these young adults transitioned into adulthood as grounded and skilled brokers who effectively leverage their secure immigration statuses, life skills, and local knowledge bases as engaged citizens advocating for their communities.  

Dr. Getrich also maintains a long-standing interest in health inequities faced by immigrants and other structurally marginalized populations. She is particularly interested in strategies for promoting health equity by addressing structural barriers to care, such as the use of community health workers (CHWs). She is currently collaborating with interdisciplinary colleagues at UMD on the Pandemic Readiness Initiative to examine how CHWs are building back and sustaining trust in the aftermath of the pandemic. This research builds on her prior work on mixed-method interventions examining the use of patient navigators in cancer prevention and screening and promotoras as mental health practitioners addressing depression and broader social determinants of mental health.

Dr. Getrich’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the American Cancer Society, UNM’s Clinical and Transnational Science Center, the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence, in addition to the UMD Division of Research (Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Award), College of Behavioral and Social Science (Dean's Research Initiative Award), Graduate School (Research and Scholarship Award), and Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity.

Dr. Getrich joined the Department of Anthropology in fall 2014. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology with Distinction from the University of New Mexico (2008), her M.A. in Applied Anthropology from Northern Arizona University (2001), and her B.A. in Anthropology, with a minor in Spanish, from the College of Wooster (1997). Prior to coming to UMD, she was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist for six years (2008-2014) in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico and taught at the University of New Mexico and San Diego City College.