Julia E. Szymczak, PhD is a medical sociologist with expertise in the social and cultural determinants of decision-making and behavior in health care organizations. Through her research, she seeks to achieve two overarching goals: (1) generate knowledge about the social mechanisms that produce safe, high quality, and equitable health care and (2) apply that knowledge to the design and implementation of interventions that improve patient outcomes, minimize unintended consequences, and are sustainable. She is an internationally recognized expert on the sociobehavioral dynamics that shape antimicrobial use across clinical contexts in human and veterinary medicine and in the application of implementation science frameworks to research in antimicrobial stewardship. Dr. Szymczak’s research has been funded by AHRQ, CDC, and PCORI.
Her peer-reviewed scholarship has appeared in journals such as Clinical Infectious Diseases, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Pediatrics, and more. She is the recipient of the 2020 Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Research Scholar Award for work measuring the prevalence and predictors of burnout in antimicrobial stewardship personnel across U.S. hospitals. She serves as the Associate Director for Social Science Methods in Healthcare Delivery Science in the Center for Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as an elected member of the Medical Faculty Senate at the Perelman School of Medicine, and as a Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is an Associate Editor of BMJ Quality and Safety.