Suzanne L. Wenzel Ph. D
Clinicial Pyschologist and Professor
USC, School of Social Work
Serving on the Board since 2010
“I have spent numerous hours of my professional life speaking with women, men and youth experiencing homelessness and with the providers who serve them. Being on the board is an honor because I share Weingart Center’s goals of improving the lives of homeless people and ending homelessness.”
SUZANNE L. WENZEL has devoted much of her career to interdisciplinary research that seeks to understand and address health-related needs of vulnerable populations, particularly homeless persons.
Dr. Wenzel has served as the principal investigator on multiple projects sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Her funding 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 $11.8 million. Her research involving homeless persons include an investigation of the relationship of trauma to risk for substance use and HIV/AIDS among homeless women; examinations of the broad social context of risk for substance use and HIV/AIDS among homeless women and men; and development of programs specifically adapted for this population to treat post traumatic stress disorder, and to prevent victimization, risky sex and substance misuse. Additional research activities include evaluations of drug treatment courts and substance abuse treatment programs.
After completing her doctoral studies in community psychology, Dr. 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 Social Work in 2009, she was senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where she also served as the research quality assurance manager for the RAND Health program.
Dr. Wenzel is an elected fellow in the Association for Psychological Science. She is also a member of the American Public Health Association, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Community Research and Action within the APA, and the Society for Social Work and Research. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, has performed review services for 28 scholarly journals, and has served on review panels for the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies.
Dr. Wenzel received her Ph.D. in Psychology from The University of Texas at Austin and her B.A. in Urban/Regional Planning from Texas State University, San Marcos.
