Health Systems and Population Health

Research Interests

Addictions, Social and Structural Determinants of Health and Health Care, HIV, PrEP, Implementation Science, Learning Health Systems, Evidence-based care for substance use and substance use disorders, Critical Race Theory, Mixed Methods

Bio

Emily Williams is an addictions health services and disparities researcher and an implementation scientist. She serves as Professor of Health Systems and Population Health and Director of the Doctoral Program in Health Services at the University of Washington. She also has affiliate appointments at the Denver-Seattle Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered Value-Driven Care at VA Puget Sound Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute.

Dr. Williams is interested in structural and related social determinants of health and their impacts on communities’ and individuals’ lived experiences, health behaviors, access to and receipt of health care, and health outcomes. She applies these interests to a research portfolio focused on substance use and HIV and specifically on understanding barriers to and increasing access to evidence-based care for unhealthy alcohol and opioid use in medical settings (e.g., primary care and HIV clinics) and community settings (e.g., syringe service programs and community pharmacies). Her research portfolio focuses in large part on communities disproportionately adversely impacted by structures that determine inequitable access to resources.

Dr. Williams’s studies include mixed methods formative and summative evaluations of implementation efforts and clinically-relevant policies, clinical epidemiology using large health systems data, and hybrid trials testing implementation strategies to improve care. She, in interdisciplinary partnership with others, currently leads research on tailoring and testing practice facilitation to implement evidence-based alcohol-related care in HIV clinics, refining decision aids to address unhealthy alcohol use and HIV prevention; in primary care, particularly among LGBT patients and women; and evaluating the influence of COVID-19-related policies on racialized disparities in receipt of and retention in treatment for opioid use disorders. She works in partnership with diverse and interdisciplinary researchers at multiple career stages and uses Critical Race Theory and community-engaged methods to guide her disparities research.

Dr. Williams also mentors junior investigators at all stages and serves as multiple PI on two federally-funded training grants in HSPop–an AHRQ T32 and the “Training in Equity and Structural Solutions for Addictions” T32, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and leads the Alcohol, Behavior, and Health Services Core within the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) of persons living with HIV.

PUBLICATIONS

Education

PhD Health Services, University of Washington, 2009
MPH Health Policy, Health Law, Boston University, 2003
BA Political Science, Lewis And Clark College, 1998

Academic Programs and Affiliations

• PhD Program in Health Services
• VA Puget Sound Health Care System Research and Development