Emily C. Williams

Education

About

Emily Williams is a health services researcher and implementation scientist with 15 years of experience in research related to prevention and management of unhealthy alcohol use in medical settings. She is a core investigator at the Denver-Seattle Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered Value-Driven Care at VA Puget Sound Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) and an Associate Professor of Health Services and the Associate Director of the Doctoral Program in Health Services at the University of Washington. Her interests are in health behavior and mechanisms and systems of care that can help drive behavior change, as well as vulnerable populations, stigma and health and healthcare disparities. She has applied these interests and expertise to a 15-year research career focused on ensuring that patients with unhealthy alcohol use and alcohol use disorders receive the care they need to help with their drinking. For 13 of these years, her work has been focused on Veterans receiving VA care. Her primary contributions include: 1) development and pilot testing of clinical informatics tools to implement alcohol-related care; 2) mixed-methods implementation science focused on understanding and addressing gaps in care and care quality for Veterans with unhealthy alcohol use; 3) clinical epidemiology focused on predicting alcohol-related medical risks using routine alcohol screening scores; 4) disparities research focused on understanding differences in alcohol use and related care across demographic and clinical sub-groups to identify patient populations that may be particularly vulnerable; and 5) health services research focused on effects of and interventions for unhealthy alcohol use among patients with HIV and Hepatitis C.