Brief Bio
Christina VandePol, M.D. is a writer, physician, and former coroner whose fiction and nonfiction often combines her love of medicine and language. Her creative nonfiction essays have been published in The Sun (Readers Write), Killer Nashville Magazine and The Rumpus. She’s currently completing a memoir about her experiences as coroner. Born in a bombed-out post-WW2 city in the Netherlands, then raised in orchards in four different U.S. states, Christina now volunteers at a free clinic and tends a wild garden in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Long Bio
Christina VandePol, M.D. is a writer, physician, and former coroner whose fiction and nonfiction often combines her love of medicine and language. Her creative nonfiction essays have been published in The Sun (Readers Write), Killer Nashville Magazine and The Rumpus. She’s currently completing a memoir about her experiences as coroner.
Dr. VandePol was the first woman and first Democrat to be elected coroner of suburban Chester County, Pennsylvania in over two centuries. During four stormy years (2018-2022), she steered her office through both the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, overseeing 5,697 death investigations and achieving national certification as a medicolegal death investigator (F-ABMDI).
Recognized as an expert on coroners and death investigation, Dr. VandePol has been interviewed and quoted by the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, NBC News, and multiple regional and local media outlets on topics including drug deaths, unclaimed bodies, the COVID-19 pandemic, deaths in custody, and climate-related deaths.
Dr. VandePol has been an invited speaker for the Delaware Valley Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Pennsylvania Sierra Club, and a guest blogger for Miss Demeanors (a blog for readers and writers of mystery, crime, and suspense fiction). A member of the Nonfiction Authors Association, Sisters in Crime, and the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners, Dr. VandePol also serves as Secretary and Board Member of her Medical Society and is active in several women’s political organizations. In 2024 she was recognized as a Pioneer Female Physician at a local Historical Society and AAUW Women’s History Month event.
Born in the Netherlands, Dr. VandePol emigrated to the United States when she was four, later becoming the first in her family to attend college. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. VandePol is board-certified in internal medicine and endocrinology. Before her election as Coroner of Chester County, PA, she worked as an internist, rural emergency-room doctor, clinical researcher, educator, and medical writer. After leaving office in 2022, Dr. VandePol researched and authored an academic study titled Coroner/Medical Examiner Services in Pennsylvania, and created Cause & Manner, a Medicolegal Death Investigation Blog. When she’s not writing, Dr. VandePol volunteers at a free clinic and tends a wild garden in southeastern Pennsylvania.