Ted Green

1944-2025

Past WAPA president and medical anthropologist Edward Crocker “Ted” Green (PhD, Catholic University of America, 1974) passed away suddenly at home on November 5, 2025, following a week in the hospital after emergency abdominal surgery.

Born in 1944, he is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Susan “Suzie” Green, his son, Timothy Green, and a brother, Mark Green.

Green worked for more than 40 years in global health and international development. He was a pioneer in anthropological research on indigenous healers, and he was one of the first to develop public health programs based on collaboration between African indigenous healers and western-style biomedical personnel.

Much of his work since the latter 1980s related to AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, primarily in Africa, but also in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. He also served as a public health adviser to the governments of both Mozambique and Eswatini (Swaziland.)

He was a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health and served as senior research scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies for eight years, the last three years as director of the AIDS Prevention Project. He was later affiliated with the Department of Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University (2011–14) and the George Washington University as research professor (2015-2025).

He was appointed to serve as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (2003–2007), and served on the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Health (2003–2006). Green also served on the boards of such organizations as AIDS.org and the Bonobo Conservation Initiative.

From 2015-16, Green served as WAPA's president, and was a decades-long member. In 1982, he received an honorable mention for his health education research in Swaziland (now the Kingdom of Eswatini) from WAPA's Praxis Award. The award recognizes excellence in practitioner anthropology. His work aligned with tribal healers in Africa in the context of contemporary Western medical crises. His chapter  “The Integration of Modern and Traditional Health Sectors in Swaziland,” is in the Praxis book, Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action (Westview Press, 1987).

In “Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries” (2003), Green challenged the accepted wisdom of the AIDS prevention community about the efficacy of condoms, HIV counseling, and testing as prevention strategies. He argued that epidemiological evidence showed it was behavioral change leading to declines in the number (and perhaps concurrency) of sexual partners that was primarily responsible for Uganda's two-thirds decline in HIV prevalence from 1992 to 2003. He also noted evidence of changes in sexual behavior and HIV-prevention success in other countries. Green summarizes the book's thesis as follows: “The largely medical solutions funded by major donors have had little impact in Africa, the continent hardest hit by AIDS. Instead, relatively simple, low-cost behavioral change programs—stressing increased monogamy and delayed sexual activity for young people—have made the greatest headway in fighting or preventing the disease's spread. Ugandans pioneered these simple, sustainable interventions and achieved significant results.”

In March 2009, Green generated controversy when he supported a remark from Pope Benedict XVI regarding promoting condom use among sexually active persons to prevent AIDS in Africa, in which the pope suggested that condom distribution risked worsening the problem. In a March 29, 2009, editorial in The Washington Post, he argued that empirical data supported the pope, and that condoms have not worked as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa.

Green updated his argument that sexual behavior needs to be addressed in AIDS prevention in two later books: “Broken Promises: How the AIDS Establishment Has Betrayed the Developing World,” and, with Allison Herling Ruark, “AIDS, Behavior, and Culture: Understanding Evidence-Based Prevention,” both published in 2011. On the back cover of the latter book, Africanist scholar John Janzen wrote "(this book) should be on every Africanist medical anthropology reading list".

Green established the New Paradigm Fund (active from 2010 to 2022) to identify, develop and share models for addressing the problems associated with AIDS, addiction, rain forest and primate conservation, and aspects of poverty associated with stateless and minority peoples.

Green’s organized and indexed collection of field notes, personal observations and reflections, photographs, audio recordings, and other materials are part of the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution. These include sound recordings of music and field interviews among the Matawai Maroons (descendants of Africa slaves who escaped from the coastal plantations in the 17-18th centuries) of Suriname. An index to these resources is found at https://sirismm.si.edu/EADpdfs/NAA.2016-31.pdf.

He is the author of 10 books and over 500 scientific articles, book chapters, and commissioned reports. His most recent book (2023), a memoir, is “On the Fringe: Confessions of a Maverick Anthropologist.” As part of his legacy, he leaves the Edward C. Green Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund at George Washington University. The fund will provide post-doctoral fellowships for scholars from Africa who want to put their academic knowledge to work to address contemporary social problems.

Green attended the Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts, and Seoul American High School in Korea (1960–62). He was educated at George Washington University (B.A., 1967, Anthropology), Northwestern University (M.A., 1968, Anthropology) and the Catholic University of America (Ph.D., 1974, Anthropology). He held post-doctoral fellowships at Vanderbilt University (1978–79), Harvard University (2001–2002), and visiting lectureships at the University of Kentucky and West Virginia University.

A more detailed and personal tribute to Green from a friend and collaborator, Curtis Abraham, can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/1306258129/posts/pfbid0B4xzb9sgA1LdGPaiqB9A6NHM9wQzvdzEmhr834PNsyPzBmzJuhrk7hVQ26gSHB5ol/?app=fbl.