Joan Ilardo, PhD, LMSW is the Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and the Director of Research Initiatives for the Michigan State University (MSU) College of Human Medicine. She facilitates faculty research collaborations and oversees medical student research activities. Her research areas of interest are patient-provider partnerships, comorbid chronic conditions, long-term care services and supports, and coordinating primary care and community-based supports and services.

Dr. Ilardo is on the faculty of the Building Research Capacity in Primary Care Fellowship of the Association of Departments of Family Medicine. She is on the executive committee of the NIA-funded Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. She is a member of the team evaluating the Flint Water Crisis Medicaid Waiver. She is a member of the steering committee of the Michigan Dementia Coalition and serves on the Evaluation Advisory Committee of Michigan’s CDC grant, Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure Public Health Program. She serves on several health and human services-related committees and task forces in Michigan and greater Lansing. She served on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education from 2019-2023. She served on the 15-member Michigan Commission on Services to the Aging from 2013-2019. Before joining the College of Human Medicine in 2009, Dr. Ilardo directed the MSU School of Social Work MSW program. She was a Senior Consultant at Health Management Associates for 12 years and served as the Director of Patient Information at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. 

Dr. Ilardo earned an AB in Finance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, MSW from Michigan State University, and PhD in Social Work from Michigan State University.