Emily Claypool

• University of Chicago – PhD

Bio

Emily Claypool, PhD (she/her/hers) joined DFMCH as a fellow in 2024. Claypool earned her PhD at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy & Practice where she also completed a NIH T32 predoctoral fellowship in health services research. Supported by the Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation, her dissertation titled “What does it mean ‘to work’? The Politics of Scientific Reform in a Harm Reduction Clinical Trial” ethnographically investigated a type-1 hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial of a harm reduction and peer recovery intervention to prevent opioid overdose among people recently released from jail and prison. She examined the micro-interactional dynamics of how researchers of various disciplines, clinicians, activists, and carceral administrators collaborated amidst diverging ethical and institutional obligations and professional commitments. Working alongside trial actors for over two years, she demonstrated how the paradigm of the clinical trial and the institutional demands to which it must adhere often override the goals of practitioners and researchers for social and structural change.  

Research Interests

Claypool’s research draws on science and technology studies (STS), implementation science, and extensive experience participating in the conduct of large-scale clinical trials to understand the institutional, political, and social conditions that shape service users’ trust and mistrust in health service systems and the technologies researchers advance or implement. She is particularly interested in understanding the contemporary social conditions that engender (mis)trust in experts and how scientific values and increasing trends toward “evidence-based” practices are negotiated with the fundamental ethical, moral, and social values of both health service users and providers during the interactive practice of knowledge “translation.”

Publications and Presentations

• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emily-Claypool