Elizabeth Chiarello

I am a medical sociologist and a socio-legal scholar who conducts research at the intersection of healthcare and law. My current project, funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, examines how healthcare and criminal justice tackle the opioid crisis, how they use shared surveillance technology to do so, and implications for patient care. I have interviewed over 200 physicians, pharmacists, and law enforcement agents across the U.S. for this project. I have researched the opioid crisis for the last 15 years as a graduate student at UC Irvine, as a postdoc at Princeton, and as a professor at Saint Louis University. I spent the 2019-2020 academic year as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University where I began writing a book based on my findings. My research has won multiple awards from the American Sociological Association. As a public sociologist, I have contributed to national discussions on the opioid crisis as an expert commentator in print and on radio and by writing op-eds.