The core investigative team of the Great Lakes Node is comprised of a leadership team who come from a wide array of backgrounds, each bringing unique expertise and a history of innovative research accomplishments.
Rush University System for Health
Principal Investigator: Niranjan Karnik, MD, PhD
Dr. Niranjan Karnik is the Cynthia Oudejans Harris, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University and the Associate Dean for Community Behavioral Health at Rush Medical College. He is a board-certified adult and child psychiatrist who completed his PhD in Sociology. He is funded by the NIH, SAMHSA and the Illinois Department of Human Services. His interests focus on digital therapeutics, systems-level interventions, data science, and homelessness.
University of Chicago
Principal Investigator: Harold Pollack, PhD
Dr. Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration. He is also an Affiliate Professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and the Department of Public Health Sciences. He is co-founder of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and serves as co-director of the University of Chicago Health Lab. He is a committee member of the Center for Health Administration Studies (CHAS) at the University of Chicago. His current NIH-funded research concerns improved services for individuals at the boundaries of the behavioral health and criminal justice systems, disabilities, and two major new efforts to address the opioid epidemic in Illinois and across the nation.
Loyola University
Principal Investigator: TBD
University of Illinois, Chicago
Principal Investigator: Geri Donenberg, PhD
Dr. Geri Donenberg is Professor of Medicine and Psychology at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she directs the Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science (CDIS) and the Healthy Youths Program (HYP). Dr. Donenberg has extensive experience conducting NIH-funded research nationally and internationally as Principal Investigator/Co-Principal/Co-Investigator of more than 20 federally-funded studies. Her expertise spans basic longitudinal research, prevention and intervention development and adaptation, evidence-based program implementation, and the conduct of randomized controlled trials with diverse populations of children, adolescents and adults, including low-income families, traditionally underrepresented minorities, and young men who have sex with men.
Lurie Children’s Hospital
Principal Investigator: Robert Garofalo, MD, MPH
Dr. Robert Garofalo is the Potocsnak Family Professor and Division Head of Adolescent & Young Adult Medicine and at Lurie Children’s Hospital. He is also Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University. His primary clinical and research activities relate to the care of marginalized youth populations including HIV+ and LGBT young people. His NIH research is largely HIV prevention, mostly targeting either young men who have sex with men or transgender individuals. A new area of research and clinical interest involves working with young gender variant children and families.
Northwestern University
Principal Investigator: David Mohr, PhD
Dr. David Mohr is Professor of Preventive Medicine, Medical Social Sciences and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs) at Northwestern University. Dr. Mohr’s NIH-supported research focuses on the design and implementation of digital mental health treatments that fit into the fabric of people’s lives and can be sustainably implemented in real-world settings. His research integrates user centered design processes to incorporate stakeholder input into the creation and evaluation of digital mental health services. He is also examining methods of harnessing sensor data from devices such as smartphones to identify behaviors, states, and environmental conditions, and using these to design digital mental health tools that are more effective and easier for people to use.
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Principal Investigator: David Gustafson, PhD
Dr. David Gustafson is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Preventive Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is founder of the Center for Health Systems Research and Analysis (CHSRA), a multi-disciplinary research center employing systems analysis, decision science and decision support technologies to address patient care and health policy problems. Dr. Gustafson is also the Director of the National Program Office of the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx). The Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment is a collaborative partnership between The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Paths to Recovery program, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment Strengthening Treatment Access and Retention (STAR) program, and a number of independent addiction treatment organizations. The mission of the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment is to help providers make more efficient use of their treatment capacity and to encourage ongoing improvements in treatment access and retention throughout the substance abuse field.
Medical College of Wisconsin
Principal Investigator: Julia Dickson-Gomez, PhD
Dr. Julie Dickson-Gomez is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Dickson-Gomez studies HIV prevention among drug users in the United States and El Salvador and is also interested in the influence of structural factors on HIV risk. Her research explores the effects of housing policy on drug users’ access to housing, variations in housing status and housing options of drug users, and levels of HIV risk related to these factors. Dr. Dickson-Gomez’s work also explores macro- and micro-social contexts of crack use and HIV risk in communities in El Salvador. Her work develops and evaluates the impact of structural and multi-level interventions in the U.S. and Latin America.
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