Elizabeth B. Lynch, PhD

Professor, Department of Preventive Medicine
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RUSH Medical College
Professor, Department of Preventive Medicine

Director, Section of Community Health, Department of Preventive Medicine

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  • Elizabeth B. Lynch, PhD, is a health equity researcher focused on development and implementation of effective community partnerships to conduct behavioral intervention research to promote health equity across a wide range of health conditions. She is the director of the Section of Community Health in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and is co-lead of the Research arm of the RUSH BMO Institute for Health Equity.

    Lynch is a founder and the research director of the Alive Faith Network (AFN), a partnership between African American churches and researchers to address health inequities in African American communities. She is also the co-PI of the Chicago Chronic Conditions Equity Network (C3EN), which is an NIMHD-funded P50 center at RUSH and University of Chicago to develop community-partnered interventions to address health inequity in chronic conditions in the Chicago region. Lynch also serves as a director of the Community Core of the Chicago Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM) to help coordinate and support community-engaged research partnerships and activities within RUSH and across the ITM institutions, including University of Chicago, Loyola and other large Chicago-area health care institutions.

    She has partnered with the AFN as principal investigator on six NIH-funded grants to develop and test community-based interventions to improve health equity for African Americans. She has also been PI on two NIH-funded grants to develop and test a community-based intervention to improve diabetes control among African American patients of safety net hospitals. She also partnered with the AFN as PI on two grants to provide COVID-19 testing and vaccinations in community churches and community-based organizations. These projects served as the basis for numerous other COVID-19 outreach efforts, including evaluation of social determinants of health and resource linkages for community members, and efforts to understand vaccine hesitancy among African Americans and design and implement interventions to improve vaccine uptake in this population.

    In addition, Lynch is currently PI on two NIH-funded church-based cluster-randomized trials to test interventions to improve blood pressure and physical function among African Americans. These interventions are both conducted in partnership with the AFN and are based on pilot studies conducted within AFN churches.