Christina VandePol, MD, was the first woman and first Democrat to be elected coroner of suburban Chester County, Pennsylvania in over two centuries. During four stormy years, 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).
Christina spends most of her time writing, focusing on medicolegal death investigation and its intersection with public health, medicine, and justice. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, The Sun Magazine, and Killer Nashville Magazine. She recently completed a memoir about her experiences as coroner.
Christina graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and is board-certified in internal medicine and endocrinology. She has worked as an internist, rural emergency-room doctor, clinical researcher, educator, and medical writer; currently she volunteers at a free clinic.