Judith Long, MD researches the social determinants of health, and how they affect socioeconomic and racial disparities. Her work focuses on interventions to support behavioral change in low-income patients with chronic diseases.

Dr. Long is the Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN) Perelman School of Medicine and Co-Director of the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) at the Corporal Michael J. Cresenz VA Medical Center (CMCVAMC). CHERP, which was recently refunded (October 2018), is an HSR&D Center for Innovation (COIN) focused on detecting, understanding, and reducing disparities in health and health care in vulnerable veteran populations. Dr. Long also served as a Co-Director of the VISN 4 Center for Evaluation of Patient Aligned Care Teams (CEPACT), which focused on improving veteran patient engagement and reducing disparities.

Current research focuses on interventions to reduce disparities in health using peer mentors, community health workers, and behavioral incentives among other things. Dr. Long has extensive experience directing clinical research trials to improve outcomes for patients with chronic diseases. She has completed two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of peer mentoring and financial incentives for adults with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes and recently a trial testing the long-term effectiveness of peer mentoring and evaluating whether former mentees can be trained to be effective peer mentors. She also helped direct a PCORI grant evaluating a community health worker program for patients with multiple conditions in the outpatient setting and is currently involved in a PCORI funded dissemination and implementation grant aimed at spreading this successful program.

Dr. Long is also actively engaged in the training of health services and policy researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a former T32, RWJ Clinical Scholars Program, National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP) and Masters’ Director and as such has extensive experience mentoring research fellows and junior faculty. She is currently an active mentor of several K-Awards.

Dr. Long trained in Internal Medicine Primary Care at the University of California, San Francisco and completed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars fellowship at Yale.