Geoff Gusoff

Dr. Geoff Gusoff is a family physician whose work focuses on social and structural determinants of health, particularly assessing how the ownership and control of basic resources in communities impacts health. His research explores the health impact of community ownership strategies such as worker-owned businesses and community land trusts. Through these efforts he hopes to build the evidence base for the effectiveness of community ownership interventions and help design and implement more effective models.  

Prior to NCSP, Dr. Gusoff obtained a BA degree in Public Policy and Religious Studies from Brown University, a Master of Theological Studies in Social Ethics from Boston College, and an MD/MBA from the Perelman School of Medicine and the The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his residency training in family medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  

As a scholar, Dr. Gusoff has worked on various projects assessing the impacts of community ownership models on health. He has partnered with the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) to conduct a qualitative analysis of healthcare system partnerships with community land trusts and worker-owned businesses. In partnership with the UCLA Urban Planning Department and Downtown Crenshaw, he helped develop a strategic plan to create worker-owned cooperatives in South Central, Los Angeles. He is also conducting a study to assess neighborhood health characteristics for residents of community land trusts.  

Dr. Gusoff’s primary fellowship project is a study of home care cooperatives – home care businesses owned and controlled by home care workers – to identify how worker ownership impacts job quality, care quality, and turnover. Industry data suggest home care cooperatives have significantly better job quality and half the turnover rates of traditional firms in a sector plagued by low wages and high turnover. By identifying the features of cooperatives driving these outcomes, and their impacts on patient care, he hopes to elucidate the role cooperatives can play in responding to the growing crisis in home care.