Research Interests
- Financial burden of serious illness
- Cancer disparities
- Access to healthcare
- Healthcare-based social needs interventions
- Palliative care and oncology social work
- Dissemination and implementation science
Dr. Doherty conducts mixed-method, community-engaged research to understand the relationship between economic security and health. She examines the process through which medical financial hardship accelerates existing racial and ethnic health disparities. Dr. Doherty draws upon her clinical experience as a palliative care social worker in safety-net community hospitals to develop, implement, and evaluate healthcare-based social needs interventions that target downstream social determinants of health in medically underserved populations. As an implementation scientist, she seeks to understand the role of community and organizational leaders in the delivery of evidence-based strategies to promote healthcare access, address health-related social needs, and reduce cancer health disparities.
Dr. Doherty received her MSW from the Silver School of Social Work at New York University, her PhD in Social Welfare from the CUNY Graduate Center, and was Co-Chief Research Fellow in Psycho-Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Doherty is a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and faculty at both the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation. She is lead investigator of the Guaranteed Income and Financial Treatment Trial (G.I.F.T.T.), the first randomized control trial of guaranteed income in the U.S. to focus on alleviating financial hardship in families facing cancer. At SP2, Dr. Doherty teaches courses in health policy and social work/nonprofit leadership.
