Faith Summersett Williams, PhD, MS, is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Pediatrics with secondary appointments in Medical Social Sciences and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is the director and founder of the Implementation science + Health Equity Advancement Lab (I+HEAL), housed in the Potocsnak Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine (DAYAM) at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital. Trained as a pediatric clinician-scientist, her academic and clinical interests are focused on health equity and justice to center the values and needs of historically marginalized communities. She combines this perspective with learning health system and implementation science frameworks to examine health inequities in relation to structural disenfranchisement with the goal of promoting justice in healthcare. 

Her current research program is focused on implementing evidence-based alcohol and substance use interventions for adolescents in three settings: 1) pediatric hospitals, 2) school-based health centers, and 3) global settings such as community health clinics. Through her research she hopes to serve a particularly vulnerable pediatric population – adolescents with chronic medical conditions who are at high-risk for secondary alcohol and substance use disorders. Dr. Summerset Williams is dedicated to establishing a universal standard of equitable healthcare for communities on the periphery. Her interest in studying and addressing alcohol and substance use in adolescents, especially among those with chronic illness, came about due to her deep awareness of the role substances often play as a driver of poor and inequitable health outcomes.