Monica Peek, MD, MPH, MSc

Co-Director

Dr. Monica Peek, Co-Director of the Bridging the Gap National Program Office, is an Associate Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago, where she provides clinical care, teaches and conducts health services research in the area of health disparities. Dr. Peek is the Associate Director of the Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research, where she heads the Health Disparities and Community-Based Participatory Research Core. She is an inaugural faculty fellow of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence, Director of Research at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and the Executive Medical Director of Community Health Innovation for the University of Chicago Medicine. As a 2015 Greenwall Faculty Scholar, Dr. Peek is exploring shared decision-making (SDM) between African-Americans and their providers.

Dr. Peek has developed validated instruments, conceptual models, and interventions that have been utilized in teaching, research, programmatic implementation, and real-world clinical medicine throughout the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Peek has conducted ground-breaking research in SDM among marginalized populations with diabetes. She has developed and tested conceptual frameworks for understanding SDM among African-Americans that have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Science and Medicine, the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Patient Education & Counseling. Dr. Peek has created tools and educational curricula that have been shown to improve SDM self-efficacy and behaviors, diabetes self-management and diabetes-related health outcomes among low-income African-Americans. Her work to understand and empower marginalized patients with chronic diseases has been published in an array of scientific journals, including Health Affairs, Medical Care, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and has been featured in national media outlets such as TIME magazine, ESSENCE magazine, CNN, the Melissa Harris Perry show, and The Huffington Post. Dr. Peek has authored over 65 peer-reviewed research papers and publications, and has served as the principal investigator of grants from NIH/NIDDK, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Merck Foundation to improve patient/provider communication, shared decision-making, diabetes care and health outcomes among racial/ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations.

Dr. Peek received the Outstanding Junior Investigator Award by the National Society of General Internal Medicine in 2013, and in 2017, she received the Leif Sorensen Faculty Research Award for the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Dr. Peek is currently a member of the editorial board for the journal Health Services Research, a national Council Member for the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), a National Advisory Council (NAC) member for the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ), and a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American College of Physicians (ACP). Dr. Peek received her MD and MPH from The Johns Hopkins University and her MSc from the University of Chicago.