Dorothea Cross Leighton (September 2, 1908 – August 15, 1989) was an American social psychiatrist and a founder of the field of medical anthropology.
She and her husband, Alexander Leighton, wrote The Navajo Door, which has been described as the first written work in applied medical anthropology.
Born Dorothea Cross in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, on September 2, 1908, she attended Bryn Mawr College, where she studied chemistry and biology.
She and her husband also did fieldwork in Alaska; both studies were part of an effort to incorporate anthropological methods into psychiatric interviews.
Leighton then became a professor of public health and anthropology at the University of North Carolina, a position she held from 1965 to 1974, when she retired.