Meredith Doherty, PhD, LCSW

I’m a social work researcher, educator, and licensed clinician with a deep commitment to advancing health equity. I study how money, health, and systems interact, and I design practical, evidence-based interventions that address the economic toll of serious illness and caregiving.

Before I was a researcher, I was a social worker sitting with patients and families who faced impossible trade-offs: a co-pay or a utility bill, a chemo appointment or a shift at work. These conversations stayed with me. They inform the questions I ask in my research today—questions about how we might reshape policy and care systems to be more humane, more fair, and more responsive to people’s lived realities.

At the heart of my work is a systems psychodynamic perspective, which helps me explore how unconscious forces, institutional norms, and structural pressures shape decision-making in health and economic systems. I apply this lens to develop, test, and implement economic interventions—like financial navigation, direct cash transfers, and guaranteed income—to mitigate the financial toxicity of illness.

Currently, I’m an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice, a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and a member of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation. I lead the Guaranteed Income and Financial Treatment (G.I.F.T.) Trial, one of the first randomized controlled studies to examine the impact of unconditional cash transfers on financial distress and treatment adherence among cancer patients with low incomes.

Whether working with policymakers, community organizations, or oncology clinics and hospitals, I bring a translational approach – bridging research and practice, data and empathy, systems thinking and human stories. My primary goal is to create more adaptive systems of care that center human dignity and the advances of science.