Julia "Julie" E. Szymczak is an affiliate faculty member at Clinical Futures. Dr. Szymczak is also an Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, where she Co-Directs the Utah Quality Advancement Laboratory (UQuAL). Dr. Szymczak is a medical sociologist who leads research that integrates social science theory and methods into efforts to transform healthcare delivery so it is reliably safe and high quality. Her work over the past nine years has focused on reducing the harm to patients and populations from antibiotic resistant bacteria with the following objectives: 1) characterize the social determinants of antibiotic use across clinical contexts, 2) generate evidence about what works to improve how antibiotics are prescribed, and 3) advance the use of implementation science in antibiotic stewardship research. A hallmark of Dr. Szymczak's work is an interest in the influence of organizational context on efforts to modify healthcare delivery. To center this interest, her work on antibiotics has spanned both human and veterinary medicine and taken place across varied clinical contexts including pediatrics, primary care, internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, and critical care.

Dr. Szymczak is currently a multiple Principal Investigator of three R01s funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to test the effectiveness of a tailored implementation strategy to improve antibiotic prescribing at the time of hospital discharge (1R01HS029482), develop a patient-directed nudge to improve outpatient antibiotic prescribing (1R01HS029328), and test the effectiveness of an antibiotic allergy delabeling intervention for patients with cancer (1R01HS029879). She was recently awarded a $12 million contract from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to determine whether safety net antibiotic prescribing, compared to immediate prescribing, results in decreased antibiotic use and similar clinical improvement in children with pneumonia who are well enough to managed in the outpatient setting. Dr. Szymczak believes strongly in collaborating with clinician-scientists in a co-leadership model to ensure a rigorous interdisciplinary perspective informs the generation of evidence on changing healthcare delivery. In addition to work she leads, Dr. Szymczak contributes to the success of studies funded by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. She has a particular interest in mentoring trainees and junior faculty in the use of social science theory and methods to understand implementation dynamics in healthcare.

Dr. Szymczak holds leadership positions in national and international organizations, including as a Voting Member of the Department of Health and Human Service's Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB), as an Elected Councilor of the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Board of Trustees, and as an Associate Editor at BMJ Quality and Safety. She lectures widely and is an engaging public speaker who is committed to translating the findings of her research so it is useful to clinicians, public health practitioners, and policy makers. 

Dr. Szymczak completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Division of Infectious Diseases at CHOP, holds Ph.D. and A.M. degrees in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in sociology, summa cum laude from Brandeis University.