SUZANNE WENZEL has devoted much of her career to interdisciplinary research that seeks to understand and address health-related needs of vulnerable populations, particularly individuals experiencing homelessness in urban communities.

Wenzel has served as the principal investigator on nine grants from the National Institutes of Health. Funding for these projects from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has totaled almost $12 million. Her research involving homeless persons has included an investigation of the relationship of trauma to substance use and HIV/AIDS risk among women; examinations of the social context of risk for substance use and HIV/AIDS among women, men and youth; and adaption of evidence-based programs to address post-traumatic stress and to prevent victimization and risky sexual activity among women. She is also investigating the process and outcomes of transitioning to permanent supportive housing for persons experiencing chronic homelessness and organized a Los Angeles County-wide forum on the topic of integrated care and housing for homeless persons. Wenzel has additionally focused her research on substance abuse treatment quality and continuous quality improvement, and organizational linkages among treatment courts for drug-involved offenders and community-based providers of behavioral health services.

After completing her doctoral studies in community psychology, Wenzel was awarded a National Institute of Mental Health post-doctoral fellowship in the Rutgers/Princeton program in mental health research. Prior to her appointment at the USC School of Work in 2009, she was a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., and was responsible for research quality assurance in the RAND Health program.

Wenzel serves as the director of the School of Social Work research cluster on Homelessness, Housing and Social Environment. She is an elected fellow in the Association for Psychological Science and a fellow in the Western Psychological Association. Wenzel is a member of the American Public Health Association, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Community Research and Action, and the Society for Social Work and Research. She has published 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, has performed peer review services for 35 different scholarly journals, and has served on review panels for the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies. She is also a member of several community advisory boards.