JONI S. WILLIAMS BIO

Photo of Joni S. Williams, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine, College of Wisconsin

JONI S. WILLIAMS, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW)

Joni S. Williams, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) within the Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM) and the Center for Advancing Population Science (CAPS). She has more than 12 years of experience in community-engaged research to reduce health disparities and promote health equity and social justice by implementing patient-level behavioral and social support interventions using clinical trials to reduce disparities and improve outcomes among adults with type 2 diabetes and leading observational studies to assess social determinants of health and social risk factors within vulnerable populations.

Currently, Dr. Williams is the Principal Investigator (PI) of an R21 grant (R21 DK123720) funded by the National institutes of Health/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIH/NIDDK) aimed at mitigating stressors associated with multi-caregiving responsibilities in Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) women with type 2 diabetes to improve clinical and behavioral outcomes.

Dr. Williams is also the Academic PI of a community-based workforce development grant, funded by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Endowment, that introduces nursing students to public health and the social determinants of health to promote community health nursing for systems change and improved population health.

She is a Co-Investigator on two NIH R01 grants (PI: Leonard Egede; DK118038, DK120861) designed to reduce health disparities in underserved and marginalized populations throughout Southeastern Wisconsin that test 1) an educational and behavioral activation treatment intervention to improve outcomes among Hispanic and NHB seniors with type 2 diabetes and 2) the use of structured financial incentives across racial/ethnic groups to improve diabetes-related outcomes and on an AHW funded grant (PI: Leonard Egede) to understand the role of stress on cardiovascular disease risk factors and health outcomes in a cohort of African Americans.

She currently serves as Lead of the Health Disparities and Community Engagement Unit in CAPS at MCW, as Chair of the Pipeline Workgroup for the Department of Medicine’s Executive Council for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and as a Co-Chair of the Diversity in Recruitment Committee within GIM. At the institutional level, she is a member of the Community Citizenship Mission Engagement Group (MEG) and the Diversity and Inclusion Action Committee (DIAC), which is dedicated to developing an institutional culture for recruiting, nurturing, and retaining a diverse body of students, trainees, staff, and faculty and proposing initiatives and strategies to facilitate equal opportunity and diversity in MCW’s educational, clinical, and research programs both internally and externally within and throughout the larger community.