Dr. Jason E. Glenn joined UTMB’s Institute for the Medical Humanities as Assistant Professor in 2006. After receiving his B.A. from Stanford University in 1996, he received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. in the history of science and medicine from Harvard University in 2001 and 2005, respectively. His areas of specialty include health inequities, the history of drug policy in the U.S., ethics and history of human subject research, and biological notions of race and discourses of genetic determination. At UTMB, he is a member of the Center for Addiction Research, serves on IRB #1, director of the Herman Barnett Project – which brings the local history of medicine in Texas into the Galveston public schools – and director of Sobriety High, Inc., a nonprofit organization providing community re-entry services for persons with a history of substance abuse who are returning to Galveston from prison.

As director of Sobriety High, Dr. Glenn is also a co-founder of the Galveston County Restorative Justice Community Partnership. This partnership uses the restorative justice model of re-entry, which emphasizes repairing the harm caused by an offender’s transgression(s) in planning their return to their community. Our partnership brings social service providers, health service providers, law enforcement, prison fellowship ministry, education/job training, and job finding stakeholders together monthly to coordinate community re-entry services for ex-offenders returning to Galveston County.

On the other end of the incarceration spectrum, Dr. Glenn – along with Dr. Kathryn Cunningham, the Chauncey Leake Distinguished Professor and Chair of Pharmacology and director of the Center for Addiction Research – recently won a UTMB President’s Cabinet Award to start a jail diversion program in Galveston County to divert qualifying drug offenders and persons with severe mental health disorders from prison into community treatment programs. The aim of the project is to bring a full drug and MHMR court to Galveston County.

Dr. Glenn is also a faculty advisor to the Galveston Island Community Research Advisory Committee, a group formed by local non-university affiliated Galveston citizens to advise and partner with researchers in designing projects of maximum benefit to the community. He teaches courses in the Graduate School, the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing. He lends his professional expertise to local organizations as a board member of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Women’s Center (ADA House), Holistic Community Development Corporation of Galveston, and of the Galveston Independent School District Educational Foundation.