Beth Prusaczyk is an Instructor at the Institute for Informatics and in General Medical Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She is an implementation scientist who specializes in improving healthcare for older adults and other vulnerable populations by understanding how to better disseminate and implement existing research findings into real-world practice and policy.
Her research interests include broadly what are the strategies to improve the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based healthcare practices for older adults both to policymakers and healthcare providers. She received her undergraduate degree in journalism from Webster University and her MSW and PhD from the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed her postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Dr. Prusaczyk also served as a 2018-2019 Health and Aging Policy Fellow and an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. These programs are highly competitive, year-long federal policy fellowships where fellows receive training on issues such as health and aging policy, communication skills development, and professional networking. In addition to this training, fellows complete a nine-month placement at the federal level. Dr. Prusaczyk completed her placement with the Senate Special Committee on Aging with Ranking Member Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), where she helped draft and negotiate legislation, meet with advocacy groups and research experts, prepare and staff hearings, and prepare witness testimony.
She has continued this research-to-policy translation work by teaching workshops to researchers at the local and national level on how to engage with policymakers directly and how to engage with the media and the public to advocate for policy change.
