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Chair's Message

 

 

Rinad Beidas PhD

Our vision as a department is to work collaboratively with faculty, trainees and staff, both within MSS and across Northwestern University and Northwestern Medicine, to leverage the tremendous power of social science to transform health and healthcare equitably. ”

Rinad Beidas, PhD
Chair, Department of Medical Social Sciences

Welcome to the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. This website offers information about the highly multidisciplinary and collaborative research we lead and support that aspires to transform health and healthcare equitably.

Who We Are

Our department is the leading department of its kind nationally based upon Blue Ridge rankings. We are innovative, collegial, collaborative, inclusive and highly committed to team science. We are unique among other departments at Feinberg School of Medicine in that we are dedicated to leveraging the social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics, to develop and implement innovations to transform health and healthcare equitably.

Our work seeks to understand human behavior and its interface with health. Our focus is on the human experience of disease and treatment, interactions with the healthcare system, and understanding health in the context of social science methodologies in an effort to better understand and transform health and healthcare delivery. The impactful and actionable work of our faculty is broad in focus, from prenatal to end-of-life, and across the diverse populations that make up our society. We also sponsor the Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes, one of the founding centers of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine. Medical Social Sciences faculty lead two Northwestern University institutes, the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Science and the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.

Since our department was founded in 2009 by Chair Emeritus David Cella, PhD, the scope of our work and the number of faculty within the department have grown greatly. We have had the opportunity to collaborate with virtually every department within Feinberg School of Medicine, as well as with many departments across the broader Northwestern University system, and have partnered with universities across the United States.

Our leadership team includes Vice Chair for Scientific and Faculty Development Lauren Wakschlag, PhD; Vice Chair for Research Richard Gershon, PhD; senior advisor and Chair Emeritus David Cella, PhD; and departmental administrator Seletta Nichols.

Our areas of expertise include:

  • Outcome and measurement science
  • Health equity
  • Lifespan health promotion
  • Mechanisms of health and disease
  • Implementation science

We use a suite of multi-methods, including quantitative and qualitative analytic methods, to investigate questions of interest, and have deep expertise in clinical trial design and interpretation, including efficacy, effectiveness and implementation studies.

Education

As we do for our research, the department has a collaborative approach to education. Our faculty members are involved in teaching across many specialties and we have an area of scholarly concentration dedicated to Medical Social Sciences within the medical school curriculum, including participation in the Health Sciences Integrated PhD Program. We will continue to expand our offerings to students in the coming years.

Big Picture

We are grateful to Feinberg School of Medicine leadership, particularly the dean of the medical school, Eric Neilson, MD, for recognizing the immense benefit of having a department dedicated to social science. Given that human behavior is the final common pathway for realizing the potential of discovery in medicine, leveraging the power of social science in biomedical research to ensure that individuals, clinicians, organizations, systems and communities benefit is paramount. 

Thank you for your interest in our work. Please contact us with your questions and comments.

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