Alia Crum

During her time at CASBS, Alia Crum will work on a book exploring how our beliefs shape our lives. Mainstream medicine has focused on designing new treatments, urging preventive behaviors, and targeting genetic makeup. Using interdisciplinary methods, Crums’s research highlights the mind’s central role in these initiatives, uncovering empirical insights and offering theoretical frameworks. Her goal is to write a book that synthesizes her work and ideas for a general audience.

Crum, an associate professor of psychology and medicine (primary care and population health) at Stanford University, is a recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award. Her work, inspired by research on the placebo effect, demonstrates the mind’s ability to elicit healing. She studies how mindsets affect outcomes in medicine, exercise, diet, and stress, aiming to understand how mindsets can be consciously changed to improve well-being. For more information, please visit https://mbl.stanford.edu/research.