The Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science (CDIS) is delighted to welcome Molly Martin, MD, MAPP as its new Associate Director for Community Engagement. Dr. Martin brings to the Center a wealth of experience in implementation science and community-based participatory research. She will lead CDIS’s Development Core, enhance the Center’s relationships with non-academic communities and organizations, and develop initiatives to foster training and advancement within implementation science.
Dr. Martin is a practicing pediatrician, Associate Professor, and the Associate Head of Research in the Department of Pediatrics at UIC. Dr. Martin has been the principal investigator on several National Institutes of Health-funded projects, and her research focuses on community models to improve health and health disparities, specifically the community health worker model. Dr. Martin is interested in community health worker training and intervention testing, specifically in the areas of pediatric asthma and pediatric obesity, as well as in the application of community-based participatory research approaches to behavioral intervention development and randomized controlled trials.
Dr. Martin obtained her medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin and then completed pediatrics residency and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Chicago, where she obtained a master’s of arts degree in public policy. Dr. Martin spent nine years at Rush University Medical Center before moving to the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System in February of 2014.
More recently, Dr. Martin received the Health Program Champion Award from Erie Family Health Centers for her work to develop a community health worker model to improve health outcomes for children with asthma and for her commitment to community health workers as an important human resource to the health care system. She will also be awarded the American Public Health Association Health Administration Section 2020 Research to Practice Award, demonstrating her commitment to implementation science and the uptake of proven health interventions and practices in communities that need them.
We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Martin to CDIS!