Julie Kirsch, PhD

Julie Kirsch, PhD, is a northern Minnesota native who received her BA in Psychology from the University of Minnesota, Duluth and later moved to the beautiful Pacific Northwest for her MS degree in Experimental Psychology from Western Washington University. Returning to her midwestern roots, she completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Supported by pre-doctoral fellowships through the Institute on Aging and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, her program of research focused on the interplay between psychosocial factors and the economic impacts of the 2008 Great Recession in relation to health inequities. With the Primary Care Research Fellowship, Dr. Kirsch will work with the University of Wisconsin Center of Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) to address inequities in smoking. Following a team-science approach, she aims to study the effectiveness of community and primary care based interventions in reducing barriers to quitting smoking and the impacts of social and economic stressors on smoking and health inequities. Outside of research, she engages in science communication and outreach, including debunking wellness fads that that have both obvious and hidden harms to health and well-being. To destress, she enjoys science fiction reading binges and weight-lifting.