
Dr. Weitzman’s investigations use a multidisciplinary and mixed methods approach grounded in a biopsychosocial model of disease to advance understanding, prevention, and care of youth at risk from chronic illness and/or substance use through improved interventions. She is deeply committed to supporting robust research relationships with cohorts. As such, use of participatory research methods is a throughline of her work, which explores three main areas:
Dr. Elissa Weitzman is Director of Research in the Division of Addiction Medicine, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Associate Scientist in the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine and Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her graduate training at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was in health policy, behavioral sciences, and psychiatric and social epidemiology, and she completed post-doctoral training in medical ethics and public health in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and was a mid-career fellow in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Weitzman also serves as a mentor to physician-scientists, researchers, and post-doctoral fellows at Boston Children’s Hospital and beyond. She co-directs the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine Research and Mentoring Forum and directs research training for Boston Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Addiction Medicine Fellowship.