December 21, 2022
Monica Peek, MD, MPH, MSc is the Ellen H. Block Professor for Health Justice in the Department of Medicine and affiliate faculty member of the Center for Chronic Disease Research and Policy at the University of Chicago. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine this fall, joining fellow CDRP faculty affiliates Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP, Marshall Chin, MD, MPH, and David Meltzer, MD, PhD as elected members of NAM, which recognizes individuals for outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. Honored for her international leadership in reducing health disparities, through research on how structural racism and the social determinants of health perpetuate disparities among African Americans, Dr. Peek was commended for research that has informed national guidelines and best practices regarding shared decision-making between patients and physicians and community-engaged strategies to improve health in Black communities.
A founding member of the CDRP, Dr. Peek received her MD and MPH from Johns Hopkins University, completed her residency at Stanford University Hospital, and worked for two years at a community health center for the medically underserved in Ohio through the National Health Service Corps before joining UChicago Medicine in 2006. Author of over 100 peer-reviewed research papers, Dr. Peek conducts research in pursuit of health equity and social justice, with a focus on promoting equitable doctor-patient relationships among racial minorities, integrating the medical and social needs of patients, and addressing healthcare discrimination and structural racism that impact health outcomes, including diabetes, COVID-19 and other chronic conditions.
In addition to her research and clinical practice, Dr. Peek is a member of the Executive Council of the American Diabetes Association, the International Advisory Council for Physicians for Human Rights and the Executive Board of the Greater Chicago Food Depository. She is the Associate Vice-Chair for Research Faculty Development in the Department of Medicine, an Associate Director of the Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research, an Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and a Senior Associate Editor for the journal Health Services Research.
Since 2018, Peek has served as co-director, with Dr. Marshall Chin, of the National Program Office for Bridging the Gap: Reducing Disparities in Diabetes Care, an initiative funded by the Merck Foundation to improve diabetes care and outcomes among marginalized populations by integrating medical and social care. “We have a very heterogeneous grantee portfolio in terms of geography type, location, payor mix and patient population which allows us to learn lessons about how to do this work in a variety of settings,” says Peek. “We have learned how to effectively use community health workers (by embedding them in local food banks) in frontier settings like Idaho where distrust of healthcare institutions can run high. We have learned a lot about the impact of financial incentives on supporting social needs of patients.” A special issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine will feature papers about the grantee sites and lessons learned over the course of the five-year study this January.
Peek has been working with a team of researchers across the country to focus on social care interventions through the lens of racial equity. “One of the biggest drivers of health disparities is racism,” she says. Racism has persisted in the U.S. and has caused an array of harms to racially minoritized communities. For example, structural racism limits to the access to goods, services and opportunities based on race. “This means that racially minoritized groups will have disproportionately more of the negative social determinants of health, like poverty, limited opportunities for education and employment, food insecurity, housing instability, and other factors that are known to predict poor health.” Peek’s work, funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, examined the degree to which social care interventions were considering race/racism as a factor that might impact the effectiveness of their interventions, were actually measuring potential differences in treatment effects, and had tailored their interventions to fit the needs of their intended racial/ethnic populations. The team’s findings are forthcoming in issues of JAMA Network Open and Health Services Research.
“Ultimately, we need racial equity in society in order to truly eliminate racial disparities in health,” says Peek. NAM President Victor J. Dzau, MD wrote in the Lancet this year, “There can be no health equity without social equity.” Dr. Peek notes, “This year and last year’s class were 50% women and 50% underrepresented minorities. It’s only through our diversity—diversity of lived experience, opinions, and ideas—that we get our strength. I’m so incredibly proud to be joining now. We have significant social and health problems that must be addressed, so it’s truly an honor to become a member at this point in time.” Dr. Peek’s induction could not have been more timely. NAM’s 2001 landmark report “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” is being followed up by a new study, funded by NIH, and led by the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Sciences (NASEM), of which NAM is a part. Dr. Peek was recently invited to join the NASEM Consensus Study on Unequal Treatment Revisited.
Story by Irene Hsiao