Sarah Gehlert, PhD

Affliated Faculty 

Sarah Gehlert, Ph.D., is the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work. She also serves as a research member of Washington University’s Siteman Cancer Center, is an affiliate of its Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, and is a scholar at its Institute for Public Health. Dr. Gehlert is Principal Investigator and Director of the University of Chicago NIH-funded Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research, one of its eight (P50) Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities, now a joint center with Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Gehlert is an investigator on the NICHD-funded National Children’s Study. While at the University of Chicago, she was the Helen Ross Endowed Professor and  Principal Investigator on an NIMH-funded community-based study of rural and urban women's health and mental health from 1997-2001. She was Core Leader of the Health Disparities and Communities Core of the CDC-funded Chicago Center for Excellence in Health Promotion Economics from 2004 to 2007. She served on the Internal Advisory Committee of the University of Chicago's Cancer Research Center.

Dr. Gehlert serves on the External Advisory Committee of the University of Chicago’s Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Breast Cancer and the Chicago Breast Cancer Mortality Reduction Task Force. She was Chair of NIH's 2007 Summer Institute on Community-Based Participatory Research and its 2009 Summer Institute entitled “Community-Based Participatory Research Targeting Medically Underserved Populations.”

Dr. Gehlert’s publications focus on social influences on health, especially the health of vulnerable populations. Among her current interests is the protection of human subjects in community-based participatory research, for which she and Dr. Lainie Ross received a CTSA Administrative Supplement Award.

Please see her faculty bio here for a description of all of Dr. Gehlert's research interests and for contact information.