Liz Chiarello is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a medical sociologist and socio-legal scholar who conducts research at the intersection of healthcare and law. Her research centers on how cultural forces such as law, politics, and organizational policy influence decision-making in healthcare and the criminal-legal system and how blurred boundaries between these fields affect patient care. 

Professor Chiarello’s current research centers on the the criminalization of care. Her 2024 book, Policing Patients: Treatment and Surveillance on the Frontlines of the Opioid Crisis examines how the fields of healthcare and criminal justice have used shared surveillance technology to address the crisis and how doing so has altered professional work and undermined access. She argues for a comprehensive approach to solving the crisis grounded in harm reduction, treatment, and prevention. The book received multiple awards including the Herbert Jacob Prize from the Law and Society Association and the Donald Light Book Award from the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Professor Chiarello has been a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Her research has been supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and her work has appeared in sociology and socio-legal journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Science & Medicine, and Law & Social Inquiry. As a public sociologist, she comments on opioid-related topics and has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Bloomberg News, and St. Louis on the Air.