Dr. Taft is the founder of Oak Park Behavioral Medicine, which she started in 2012 to increase access to mental health care for people with chronic illness. Dr. Taft earned her BA in psychology from the University of Illinois in Chicago, a master’s degree in information systems from Keller Graduate School, and a PsyD in clinical psychology from The Chicago School. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology.
Dr. Taft is an internationally recognized leader in the field of Gastro-Psychology. Since 2005, she has helped establish the first integrated behavioral medicine practice in gastroenterology at Northwestern and has conducted numerous research studies on the social and emotional impacts of chronic digestive disease including the first studies on medical trauma experienced by people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and stigmatization toward gastroparesis. See her Google Scholar profile for a complete list of her work.
Now a “retired” Associate Professor from Northwestern, Dr. Taft divides her time between managing the operations of OPBMed and working for the Rome Foundation Research Institute running epidemiological studies on disorders of gut-brain interaction. As such, she is not currently accepting new patients. However, she has assembled the best team you can find to meet the needs of our patients.
Dr. Taft enjoys spending time with her two children, including training with them in Shotokan karate (currently a 3rd Kyu brown belt), playing pub trivia, and taking her dogs for long walks. If she could live anywhere, it would be on the west coast of Norway, and she may have the entire script of the movie The Blues Brothers memorized.