Ross Aikins joined the faculty of Penn GSE in Fall 2013. A native Californian, he received his Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011, and specializes in collegiate substance abuse and student health research. Dr. Aikins has teaching, administrative, and research experience in K-12 and postsecondary settings, including the University of Southern California, Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA, and Occidental College.

Prior to joining Penn GSE, Dr. Aikins received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Institute of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI) in New York City, and lectured at CUNY Brooklyn College. He also served as a development consultant for The Freedom Writers Foundation in Long Beach, authoring more than $730,000 in grants from foundations including The Sherwood Foundation and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In his current role as Lecturer and Program Manager, Dr. Aikins advises over 50 full- and part-time master’s students in the Higher Education Division, and oversees the graduate assistantship program for full-time M.S.Ed. students. Additionally, Dr. Aikins teaches graduate classes, supports admissions functions of the Higher Education Ph.D., Ed.D., and M.S.Ed. programs, and manages the Higher Education Division.

Selected Publications

• Aikins, R., Golub, A., & Bennett, A. (2015). Readjustment of urban veterans: A mental health and substance use profile of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in higher education. Journal of American College Health, 63 (7), 482-494.
• Harris, S., Nikulina, V., Gelpí-Acosta, C., Morton, C., … Aikins, R., Smith, V., Barry, V., & Downing, M. J. (2015). Prescription Drug Diversion: Predictors of Illicit Acquisition and Redistribution in Three U.S. Metropolitan Areas. AIMS Public Health, 2(4), 762-783. http://doi.org/10.3934/publichealth.2015.4.762
• Aikins, R., Hoefinger, H., Guarino, H., Rosenblum, A., Magura, S., & Joseph, H. (2015). Conducting rapid street assessment of drug users in NYC using oral fluid and brief interviews: A feasibility study. Journal of Addictive Diseases. doi:10.1080/10550887.2015.1059118.
• Aikins, R. (2015, April 9). High achievers. Times Higher Education, pp. 34–41.
• Aikins, R. (2015). From recreational to functional drug use: The evolution of drugs in American higher education: 1960–2014. History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 44(1), 25–43. doi: 10.1080/0046760X.2014.979251.
• Aikins, R. (2012, August 15). Olympics, doping, genes, and other inconsistencies in ‘performance enhancement’ and sport. Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society (University of Florida).
• Aikins, R. (2011). Academic performance enhancement: A qualitative study of the practices and beliefs of stimulant using college students. Journal of College Student Development, 52(5), 560–576.

Link to Full Bio: https://scholar.gse.upenn.edu/aikins/

Bennett Allen is a PhD student in Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he is affiliated with the Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy. His research uses epidemiologic, econometric, and machine learning methods to evaluate supply-side strategies to reduce overdose death. Additional work engages bioethics in relation to public health policy. Current projects examine the impact of laws against drug-induced homicide on opioid overdose mortality, the role of prescription drug monitoring programs in pain management cessation, spatiotemporal prediction of neighborhood-level overdose mortality risk, and the ethical uses of big data in public health practice. Prior to joining NYU, he worked in drug policy for the New York City government.

Yesenia Aponte Melendez received her PhD in Sociology from The New School. Her doctoral research focused on the relationship between social class, gender and drug use. She explored how social class mediates women’s experiences, behaviors and identities as prescription opioid users. Prior to joining the BST, she worked on multiple NIH/NIDA-funded research studies on drug use, HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV). Her current research includes a pilot study that assesses HCV seroprevalence and prevalence of HCV viremia among people who inject drugs (PWID )in Puerto Rico. The study also assesses HCV treatment awareness, barriers to treatment utilization, and willingness to access HCV care. She also plans on conducting research on health disparities and stigma among Latinx PWID and its implications for HCV prevention, linkage to care and treatment.

Fong, C., Mateu-Gelabert, P., Ciervo, C., Eckhardt, B., Aponte-Melendez, Y., Kapadia, S., & Marks, K. (2021). Medical provider stigma experienced by people who use drugs (MPS-PWUD): Development and validation of a scale among people who currently inject drugs in New York City. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 221, 108589.

Abadie, R., Gelpi-Acosta, C., Aquino-Ruiz, F., & Aponte-Melendez, Y. (2020). COVID-19 risks among people who inject drugs in Puerto Rico. The International Journal on Drug Policy

Gelpi-Acosta C, Rodriguez-Diaz CE, Aponte-Melendez Y, Abadie R. Puerto Rican syndemics: Opiates, overdoses, HIV, and the hepatitis C virus in a context of ongoing crises. Am J Public Health. 2020;110:176-177. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305487. PMCID: PMC6951383.

Kim SJ, Marsch LA, Acosta MC, Guarino H, Aponte-Melendez Y. Can persons with a history of multiple addiction treatment episodes benefit from technology delivered behavior therapy? A moderating role of treatment history at baseline. Addict Behavior. 2016;54:18-23. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2015.11.009. PMCID: PMC4713265.

Guarino H, Acosta M, Marsch LA, Xie H, Aponte-Melendez Y. A mixed-methods evaluation of the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a mobile intervention for methadone maintenance clients. Psychol Addict Behavior. 2016;30(1):1-11. doi:10.1037/adb0000128. PMCID: PMC4924621.

Janna Ataiants is a 5th year doctoral student in the Community Health and Prevention Department at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health. She has over 10 years of grantmaking, advocacy and research experience in the field of substance use and misuse, particularly focusing on drug overdose and women who use drugs. She worked for Open Society Foundations as a Program Officer where she oversaw grants and provided technical and capacity-building assistance to harm reduction groups in various Eastern European countries. Janna also consulted for a number of HIV prevention and harm reduction networks and community-based groups, including the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Eurasian Harm Reduction Network. Janna’s dissertation, guided by Professor Stephen Lankenau—a former BST postdoc now at Drexel University—examines drug overdose among women in a Philadelphia-based harm reduction program. This mixed-methods study involved surveys with 220 women and 40 in-depth qualitative interviews. Preliminary results presented at the American Public Health Association 2017 Annual Meeting indicate that higher risks of overdose are associated with women’s exposure to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and polyvictimization. Janna is also a research analyst for Professor Lankenau’s NIDA-funded R01 study on young adult medical and non-medical marijuana users. She co-authored a paper on “Health Conditions and Motivations for Marijuana Use among Young adult Medical Marijuana Patients and Non-patient Marijuana Users,” which showed that among young adult marijuana users, medical marijuana patients have a significantly higher prevalence of chronic health conditions and motivations associated with medical use than non-patients. As a first-generation immigrant, Janna also has strong interest in immigration policy and its impact on health and human rights.  She is the first author of a paper “Unaccompanied Children at the United States Border, a Human Rights Crisis That Can Be Addressed with Policy Change” (published by the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health), which found that current U.S. policies and procedures violate fundamental human rights of unaccompanied children detained at U.S.-Mexican border, including the right to health, the right to due process, and the right to freedom from all forms of violence.

Selected Publications

Ataiants, J., Cohen, C., Riley, A.H., Tellez Lieberman, J., Reidy, M.C., Chilton, M. (2017). Unaccompanied children at the United States border, a human rights crisis that can be addressed with policy change. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health [Epub 2017 Apr 08].

Lankenau, S.E., Ataiants, J., Mohanty, S., Schrager, S., Iverson E., Wong, C.F. (2017). Health conditions and motivations for marijuana use among young adult medical marijuana patients and non-patient marijuana users. Drug and Alcohol Review. [Epub 2017 Apr 23].

Ataiants J, Merkinaite S, Ocheret D (2012). IDPC briefing paper – Policing people who inject drugs: Evidence from Eurasia. International Drug Policy Consortium. Available at SSRN: doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2185910.

Victoria Barry is a licensed Clinical Psychologist who specializes in health promotion, disease prevention and illness management in under-served populations. She is currently an Attending Psychologist at Harlem Hospital’s Family Care Center, where she provides mental health and substance abuse services to children, adolescents and adults living with HIV. She also is involved in clinical research development/publication, clinical service grant writing and medical staff training through Harlem Hospital’s Infectious Disease and Pediatrics Departments.

Daniel Baslock is a PhD student at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and licensed clinical social worker. His research focuses on rural health equity and expanding treatment options for people with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders. He is additionally interested in how state and federal payment structures impact service user receipt of evidence-based practices. Before returning to school for his PhD, Daniel worked in rural community mental health and substance use treatment settings providing clinical supervision, program management and direct clinical services.

Selected Publications
Choy-Brown, M., Baslock, D., Cable, C., Marsalis, S., & Williams, N. (2022). In search of the common elements of clinical supervision: A systematic review. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research. 49, 644–645.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-022-01193-3

Stanhope, V., Baslock, D., Tondora, J., Jessell, L., Ross, A., & Marcus, S. (2021). Developing a tool to measure person-centered care in treatment planning. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 12, 681597. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.681597

Baslock, D., Gramuglia, B., Spirito, A., Mashkuri, J., & Stanhope, V (2021) A brief report on rapid access to medication assisted treatment. Social Work in Mental Health. 19:6, 494-501, DOI: 10.1080/15332985.2021.1927936.

John R. Baumann, Ph.D. is the Associate Vice President for Research Compliance at Indiana University, including both the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses as well as the five regional campuses.  He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Dr. Baumann has over 25 years of experience in research, research administration, responsible conduct of research and research compliance.  In these positions, he has had direct line responsibility for research development, coordination and submission of grant and contact applications, management of funded research as well as compliance with regulations and ethical standards for human subjects research, research with animals, conflict of interest, and radiation and biological safety.  He has, therefore, been directly involved in the administration of research at all levels and is sensitive to the administrative responsibilities and burdens placed on both the researcher(s) and the institution.

In addition to his position at IU, he serves as a member of Council of Accreditation and a site visitor for AAHRPP and chairs the social-behavioral IRBs of National Development and Research Institutes and American Academy of Family Physicians. Prior to joining IU, Dr. Baumann was Vice Provost for Research at University of Missouri – Kansas City and, before that, Deputy Executive Director of National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI), a private not-for-profit behavioral science research institute in New York City with a primary focus on substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and related social problems.

Phylicia Bediako received a dual-title Ph.D. in Health Policy and Administration and Demography from Penn State University. She studies have focused on sexual and reproductive health issues among vulnerable populations in global settings. Her primary research interests center on understanding and addressing the short and long-term health outcomes of individuals exposed to sex work, trafficking, and other forms of sexual exploitation and trauma. As a BST postdoc, Phylicia is working on publishing findings from her dissertation. In one paper, titled “Motives for Sexual Abstinence among South African High School Learners: A Latent Class Analysis,” she is using latent class analysis to define students’ unique motive profiles for remaining sexually abstinent and determining the demographic characteristics and substance use behaviors associated with each motive class. Another manuscript tentatively titled, “Predictors of Transactional Sex in Cape Town High School Learners: Results from Healthwise 1 South Africa,” shows that among low-income eighth graders substance use at last sexual encounter and inhalant use appear to be among the highest risk factors for transactional sex. Phylicia has also been working with her mentor, Dr. Marya Gwadz, on manuscripts to determine risk and protective factors of substance use and sexual risk behaviors among homeless NYC youth.

Lynden Bond, LMSW, is a PhD Candidate at the Silver School of Social Work at NYU. Her research focuses on housing insecurity, homelessness, problematic substance use, and mental health. Lynden has over a decade of direct-practice and advocacy experience working with and for people experiencing homelessness, including working closely with behavioral health systems. She uses her clinical and advocacy experiences to shape her research agenda and has a strong interest in using participatory research methods to impact service delivery and policy. Lynden’s mixed-methods dissertation focuses on the association between housing insecurity and substance use and mental health-related services among emergency department patients.

Selected Publications

Bond, L., Wusinich, C., & Padgett, D. (2021). Weighing the options: Service user perspectives on homeless outreach services. Qualitative Social Work. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325021990861

Matthews, E., Bond, L., & Stanhope, V. (2020). Understanding Health Talk in Behavioral Health Encounters: A Qualitative Analysis. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1007/s10488-020-01088-1

Padgett, D., Gurdak, K., & Bond L. (2020). “The high cost of low living”: A life course perspective on substance use recovery among older formerly homeless adults with serious mental illness. Substance Abuse. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2020.1734713

Wusinich, C., Bond, L., Nathanson, A., & Padgett, D.K. (2019) “If you’re gonna help me, help me”: Barriers to housing among unsheltered homeless adults. Evaluation and Program Planning, 76. doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2019.101673

Melissa Boone is currently a user researcher with Xbox Research. Melissa earned her BA in psychology from Spelman College in 2008, then went on to complete her PhD in Sociomedical Sciences and social psychology from Columbia University, where she was a BST predoctoral trainee from 2013-2014. At Columbia, Melissa’s research activities included investigating biopsychosocial risk factors for HIV risk behavior and substance use – including experiences of stereotyping and discrimination, anxiety and depression, and self-efficacy and resilience – in Black and Latino LGBTQ young men. After receiving her PhD from Columbia in 2014, Melissa completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Prevention and Methodology Training program at Pennsylvania State University, where she used intensive longitudinal methods to investigate how Black and Latino people’s risk for HIV and substance use changed over time.

Melissa joined Xbox Research as a user researcher in the summer of 2015 – she uses her training in psychological science to help understand gamers’ experiences with Xbox’s games and how to make them even more fun and delightful. Currently, Melissa conducts research across the Minecraft franchise, including Minecraft: Education Edition. She also investigates diversity and inclusion across Xbox’s games and experiences through Xbox’s Gaming for Everyone program.

Link to CV

Emma J. (EJ) Brown, PhD, FAAN Dr. Brown’s professional career within academic settings commenced after she completed two postdoctoral fellowships; one NIH funded at NDRI and one at the Beth Israel Chemical Dependency Institute funded by the Aaron Diamond Foundation. She held the following positions during her career; research assistant, associate research scientist, assistant professor, associate professor and Director of Research and Program Evaluation. Dr. Brown has worked at Langston University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Central Florida, the University of Kentucky, and CHARM, Inc. (a community-based organization) which she found in 2000. Her established programs of research are in the areas of HIV/AIDS and substance abuse prevention among urban and rural African Americans. Two of her most significant research studies were an NIH funded R01 that ended in 2004 and a CDC U01 that ended in September 2012, although she conducted numerous preliminary studies which informed larger studies in both HIV and substance abuse prevention intervention. Dr. Brown has a substantial (44+ peer reviewed) publication record stemming from data generated from these research projects. Although, Dr. Brown’s primary research interests have been HIV and substance abuse prevention, she is also interested in research with a focus on other lifestyle health promotion strategies and self-management of chronic health conditions. Dr. Brown was tenured at the University of Central Florida in 2003 and the University of Kentucky in 2006, and was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing in 2005.

Link to CV

Stephanie Campos has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and a Women’s Studies Certificate from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her areas of interest in drug policy research include: novel psychoactive substances, war on drugs, incarceration in the U.S. and Latin America, and HIV transmission among PWID and their networks in Latin America. Her dissertation, which was supported while Stephanie was a Predoctoral Fellow in BST, was titled “Small Village/Large Hell: Cocaine and Incarceration in Lima, Peru.” It explored the ways in which the Santa Monica women’s prison in Lima both reflects and reconstructs intersecting inequalities of race, class, gender and citizenship and traces prisoners’ pathways to the drug market and subsequent incarceration. After earning her doctorate, she worked as an Assistant Project Director at National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI), Inc., on two NIDA grants: “Heterosexual Black Females: Socialization and HIV Risks in Scripts and Practices,” and “Bath Salts and the Illicit Drug Market: Use, Violence and Health Consequences” (Ellen Benoit and Eloise Dunlap, PIs). Based on this experience and her desire to become an independently funded NIDA researcher, Dr. Campos was appointed as a BST Postdoctoral Fellow (in January 2016). Since then she has written several papers and worked on a few proposals in addition to continuing her work on the Bath Salts study at NDRI. She has a manuscript in press based on her dissertation that shows how intimate partner violence contributes to the incarceration of women in Peru. Another manuscript explores the motivations of low-income substance-using Black women for pursuing multiple sex partnerships. To develop an R01 grant (with Pedro Mateu-Gelabert and Sam Friedman at NDRI) for a respondent driven sampling study of drug injectors and their social networks in Colombia, Stephanie conducted a pilot study to determine the feasibility of recruiting and collecting specimens to test for HIV/HCV with a small sample. She also submitted her own an R21 grant application to NIDA to do a study of “Drug Use Patterns among Men during and after Community Supervision.” Stephanie received a funding (with her colleague Alexis Jemal, a former BST predoctoral fellow) for a pilot study from Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) to adapt an evidence-based intervention to reduce HIV/STI risk among substance using, heterosexually identified men and women who have multiple sex partners.

 Selected Publications

Campos, S. (in press). “He Beat Me”: How Intimate Partner Violence Contributes to the Incarceration of Women in Peru In Carceral Community: Troubling Prison Worlds in 21st Century Latin America. Graces C, Darke S, Duno-Gottberg L, Antillano A, editors. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Campos, S., Benoit, E. & Dunlap, E. (2016). Black Women with Multiple Sex Partners: The Role of Sexual Agency. Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships. 3(2), 53-74.

 Campos, S. (2016). “I Was in Crisis”: Motherwork, AIDS and Incarceration. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 18(2), 230-247.

Campos, S. (2016). The Santa Monica prison and illegal cocaine: a mutual relationship. Crime, Law and Social Change, 65(3), 251-268.

Ariadna Capasso is an advanced PhD candidate in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at New York University School of Global Public Health. Prior to joining NYU, Ariadna was a senior technical advisor at Management Sciences for Health, where she provided strategic leadership and managed a wide range of sexual and reproductive health projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has over a decade of expertise providing technical support to United Nations agencies, such as the United Nations Population Fund and the Pan American Health Organization. Ariadna’s research focuses on the adaptation of the Theory of Gender and Power to predict problem alcohol use among Black and Latina women and on the intersection of alcohol use, gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health among women of color. In 2018, Ariadna was a fellow of the NIDA-funded Substance Abuse Research Education & Training (SARET) at NYU School of Medicine and was a recipient of a National Hispanic Health Foundation (NHHF) Hispanic Health Professional Student Scholarship. Ariadna is a member of the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Selected Publications

Capasso A, Brown JL, Safonova P, Belyakov N, Rassokhin V, DiClemente RD (2021). Heavy Alcohol Use Is Associated With Lower CD4 Counts Among Russian Women Living With HIV: A Multilevel Analysis” has been AIDS and Behavior.

Capasso A, Jones AM, Ali SH, Foreman J, Tozan T, DiClemente RD (2021). Increased alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic: The effect of mental health and age in a cross-sectional sample of social media users in the U.S. Preventive Medicine,145:e 106422. https:// https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2021.106422

Capasso A, Skipalska H, Guttmacher S, Tikhonovsky NG, Navario P, Castillo TP. Factors associated with experiencing sexual violence among female gender-based violence survivors in conflict-afflicted eastern Ukraine. BMC Public Health. 2021 Apr 24;21(1):789. doi:10.1186/s12889-021-10830-9

 Capasso A, DiClemente RJ & Wingood GM. (2019). Pregnancy Coercion as a Risk Factor for HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Young African American Women. JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 82. doi:10.1097/qai.0000000000002174

Michael A. Carroll is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Rice University. His interests include inequality, race, and how place complicates these concepts. His research will explore the opioid epidemic– specifically the impact of suburban life and norms on African American opioid users and how being African American shapes opioid use and navigating stigma, social institutions, interpersonal relationships, and treatment and recovery processes. Michael graduated from Texas Christian University in 2018 and holds a B.S. in Sociology.

Jasmin Choi is a PhD student in Social and Behavioral Sciences track at NYU’s School of Global Public Health. Jasmin is passionate about promoting and sustaining health equity by implementing and evaluating evidence-based policies and services. She is specifically interested in exploring harm reduction approaches to mitigate the effect of stigma and address barriers to healthcare access for individuals with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. Previously, she worked as a federal policy analyst and coordinator for Massachusetts’ Medicaid program. She also worked at Boston University School of Public Health focusing on substance use and HIV research. She received a BA in Chemistry from University of California, Riverside and a dual-degree Master’s in Social Work (MSW) in group therapy work specialization and Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Boston University. As a first-generation low-income student, her career goal is to utilize research to empower communities.

Selected Publications

Xuan, Z., Choi, J., Lobrutto, L., Cunningham, T., Castedo de Martell, S., Cance, J., … & Holleran Steiker, L. (2021). Support services for young adults with substance use disorders. Pediatrics, 147(Supplement 2), S220-S228.

Xuan, Z., & Choi, J. N. (2021). Content analysis of the use of fear in The Real Cost Youth E-cigarette Prevention Campaign. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 14(3), 206-215.

Mindy Cohen is currently employed at Farnum Center which is part of Easter Seals, located in Manchester, New Hampshire. Farnum is an alcohol and other drug treatment facility. Services include a Medical  Detoxification program, a 30 day Residential Program, Suboxone clinic , Transitional housing services and an Outpatient Department . Within the Outpatient Department are three levels of care including Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) and Outpatient Services.

Mindy is Clinical Psychologist/Outpatient Substance Abuse Counselor. As such she sees clients for individual sessions who are attending Suboxone Clinic, as well as facilitates groups in both the IOP and PHP levels of care of treatment. In addition, several times per week she conducts level of care assessments , during Open Assess using ASAM criteria and the DSM V.

Farnum Centers’ approach to addiction and recovery is Three principles. This is a strength based Resiliency model that compliments twelve step programs model.

Contact information : mcohendunlop@eastersealsnh.org

Hannah Cooper is currently Vice Chair for BSHE, Co-Director of the Prevention Sciences Core for Emory University’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), and Director of the RSPH Program on the Social Determinants of Health and of the RSPH Certificate Program in the Sociocontextual Determinants of Health. My research expertise includes studying the social determinants of health, with a particular focus on the social determinants of drug use, drug users’ health, and health disparities. I apply multilevel, geospatial, and qualitative methods to explore these topics.

Laura Curran, MA, LMHC is a 3^rd year doctoral student in the Silver School of Social Work at NYU. Her research focuses on medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder among pregnant women. She has 4 years of clinical experience working in the child welfare system and as a substance use counselor in a harm-reduction methadone program in Tampa, Florida. Laura seeks to contribute knowledge about substance use and mental health interventions, and to improve collaboration between substance use services, child welfare system, and healthcare systems. Her current research with Dr. Jennifer Manuel examines the effectiveness of Critical Time Intervention (CTI) for individuals with substance use disorders leaving residential treatment. Also, her current work includes a pilot study on the use of a smartphone-based application for individuals in substance use treatment and a study evaluating substance use service providers’ perceptions of  implementation of evidence-based practices in the context of recent changes in healthcare policies. She also has a strong interest in the ways that stigma associated with substance use during pregnancy influences treatment outcomes, as well as advocating for specialized services for women and families struggling with substance use. Laura’s dissertation will focus on facilitators and barriers to different types of medication-assisted treatment faced by pregnant and parenting women in New York City.

Alexandra Duncan is a senior officer with Pew’s substance use prevention and treatment initiative, which works on federal and state initiatives to reduce the inappropriate use of prescription opioids and increase access to evidence-based treatment for substance use disorders. Before joining Pew, Duncan was a research associate at IMPAQ International LLC, where she supported the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight on issues related to Affordable Care Act compliance with prescription drug and nondiscrimination regulations for high-cost medical conditions, including opioid use disorder, as well as evaluation of health programs. Previously, she was a senior analyst for Abt Associates, working in the division of U.S. health, public health, and epidemiology practice on several projects related to HIV testing and the integration of HIV treatment and substance abuse treatment. Duncan completed postdoctoral training in drug dependence epidemiology at John Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health after earning a doctor of public health degree from Columbia University. She also holds a master’s degree in public health from Tulane University and a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College.

Dr. Eloise Dunlap is Director of the Institute for Special Population Research and Principal Investigator.  She is responsible for planning, grant writing, obtaining funding, administering, supervising and evaluating all staff, overseeing data collection, planning data analysis, report writing, editing, and preparing manuscripts for scientific journals and publications.  In her present position, a major function carried out is advancing research careers of more junior scientists, especially in helping them to obtain their own funding to conduct research and to publish in peer-review journals.

Dr. Dunlap has extensive qualitative experience in research and analysis with African-American families, drug users, drug dealers, distressed households, sex workers, and with drug-abusing families. Her work is rooted in an attempt to understand violence, drug use and markets, male-female and family relations and whether and how these relationships contribute to African-American family instability.  She has conducted survey research, focus groups, intensive ethnographic studies, including lengthy in-depth interview and detailed observations in many African-American households, communities, drug settings, and a variety of inner city social context. Her research has been focused upon the nature of family interaction patterns and how the presence of drug users/sellers affects family life.

Dr. Dunlap’s long-term career goal is to increase public understanding and uncovering social processes by which behavioral patterns of aggression and violence are practiced, as well as learned and passed on from one generation to another, and drug use and co-occurring factors among inner city distressed families. She is working to develop a more accurate and precise conceptual and empirical understanding of the nature, types, and severity of aggression and violence within African-American families when one or more members participates in crack and other drug consumption and/or sales. A relevant sub theme of such a research agenda involves understanding the progression or its lack from alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana to hard drug (cocaine, crack, and heroin) use and/or sales as well as violence in various social contexts especially within the family.

Selected Publications

• Dunlap, E., Townes, J. 2016. Violence and the Illicit Drug Market: Before During and After Disasters. Sociology and Criminology- Open Access. 4.2
• Dunlap, E., Brown, E. Drug Use and Spatial Dynam8cs of household Allocation. Journal Addiction Research Therapy 10:7(2).
• Dunlap, E. 2016. Knowledge, Awareness and Behavior: HIV/AIDS and Disasters. J Alcohol Drug Depend. 4(1).
• Dunlap, E., Graves, J. L. & Benoit, E. (2012) Stages of drug market change during disaster: Hurricane Katrina and reformulation of the New Orleans drug market. International Journal of Drug Policy.

Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Nadja’s ethnographic dissertation research explores the race, gender, and class politics of drug courts and court-mandated drug treatment as emergent “alternatives” to incarceration in the context of the overdose crisis and a national movement for criminal justice reform. Beginning with a women’s drug treatment facility in Queens, this ethnographic project follows clients through the institutional network of court-mandated drug treatment—positioned as a softer  alternative to incarceration—to investigate how “womanhood” is produced through contemporary efforts to control and rehabilitate drug users within legal, medical, and lay discourses and institutions of criminality, drug use, and recovery. Prior to graduate school, Nadja worked at Prevention Point Philadelphia, the city’s only legal syringe exchange, where she conducted ethnographic research in shooting galleries in North Central Philadelphia, focusing on how people who use drugs mobilize harm reduction practices and resources to keep themselves safe in the face of criminalization and state disinvestment.

Selected Publications

Eisenberg-Guyot, Nadja (2018). “ How to Respond to the Opioid Crisis .” Tikkun Daily.

Augustyniak, Nadia, Matt Chrisler, Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot, Ola Galal, Lisa Jahn, & Austin Miller. (2018). “Findings: Fracturing Infrastructure.” Anthropology Now 10(1), 51-61.

Eisenberg-Guyot, Nadja (2017). “ From Masquerade Laws to Bathroom Bills.” Slate.

Eisenberg-Guyot, Nadja, A. Crumdy, C. Dolph, Z. Glück, S. Molinari, S. Novacich, C. María Salvi, & D. Schneider (2016). “Findings: Spatial Scales and Social Control”. Anthropology Now 8(2):81-89.

Matthew W. Epperson, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Smart Decarceration Initiative. His research centers on developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions to reduce disparities in the criminal justice system. His primary area of focus is examining and addressing person- and place-level risk factors for criminal justice involvement among persons with mental illnesses. Professor Epperson’s interests also include developing conceptual, evidence-based approaches to effective and sustainable decarceration. His scholarship and teaching aim to build and advance the capacity of the social work profession to address these challenges and opportunities for criminal justice transformation. He is Co-Leader of the Promote Smart Decarceration network, through the Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative. He has over 15 years of clinical and administrative social work experience in behavioral health and criminal justice settings.

Link to CV

Yoel Everett is a 5th year doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Oregon (UO). His research focuses on treatment development for families in which a parent has psychopathology. More specifically, he is currently working to integrate Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills with evidence-based Parent Training (PT) for parents who experience emotion dysregulation – a transdiagnostic feature of a wide range of mental health disorders that is also linked to poorer parenting behaviors. This transdiagnostic, integrated mental health and parenting intervention aims to improve parent mental health, parenting quality and child mental health, and ultimately reduce the risk of transmission of psychopathology from parents to children. His dissertation research on a DBT+PT intervention for emotionally dysregulated parents with a history of substance use disorder has received funding from NIDA’s P50 Center on Parenting and Opioids and his work is supported by the BST Predoctoral Fellowship. In addition to this clinical research, Yoel also has 4 years of clinical experience working with parents and families and providing evidence-based psychotherapy (i.e. CBT, DBT, Parent Training, IBCT couple’s therapy).

Selected Publications

Everett, Y., Martin, C.G. & Zalewski, M. A Systematic Review Focusing on Psychotherapeutic Interventions that Impact Parental Psychopathology, Child Psychopathology and Parenting Behavior. Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev 24, 579–598 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-021-00355-3

Zalewski, M., Maliken, A. C., Lengua, L. J., Gamache Martin, C., Roos, L. E., & Everett, Y.
(2020). Integrating dialectical behavior therapy with child and parent training interventions: A narrative and theoretical review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, (March), 1–14. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1111/cpsp.12363

Martin, C.G., Everett, Y., Skowron, E.A., Zalewski, M. The Role of Caregiver Psychopathology in the Treatment of Childhood Trauma with Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Systematic Review. Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev 22, 273–289 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-019-00290-4

Judy Fenster

Link to Webpage

Link to CV

Yohansa Fernández, LMSW, is a 4th year Ph.D. student at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work. She is also a full member of the New York City HIV Planning Group. Her research interests include the mechanisms through which syndemic factors including drug use are associated with HIV/STI risk among marginalized populations. Prior to beginning her doctoral program, she was employed as a research coordinator at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and also worked as an assistant research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies (now known as the division of Gender, Sexuality and Health) on one of the largest cohort studies of perinatally HIV infected and/or exposed youth in the country. Currently, she is a predoctoral fellow in the Interdisciplinary Research Training Institute on Hispanic Drug Abuse R25 program at the University of Southern California. She is a former fellow of Brown University’s R25 Initiative in HIV and AIDS Clinical Research for Disadvantaged (Underrepresented) Communities.

Selected Publications

 Hernández D., Castellón P., Fernández Y., Torres Cardona F., Miranda de Leon S., Vargas Vidot J., Schackman B., Rodriguez A., Feaster D., Santana Bagur J., Metsch L. (In Press). Understanding Substance Use and the HIV Care Cascade in San Juan, Puerto Rico: Implications for Intervention Research and Sustainable Practice in a Layered Risk Environment. Health Education & Behavior.

Minerva Francis, MPH, CHES is a doctoral student of health education in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. She was a Project Manager of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funded project from 2015-2018. She helped implement and facilitate a screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) program that trained undergraduate health profession students, college faculty and community partners. Throughout her academic and professional career, she has explored social determinants of health and health intervention strategies to achieve health equity for marginalized communities. Her past research focused on the intersectionality of health disparities and substance use among transgender women of color. Topics under consideration for dissertation research include postpartum substance use and depressive symptoms, cannabis addiction, and agenda setting theory related to health literacy.

David Frank earned his Ph.D. in April 2018 in sociology from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, specializing in sociology of drug use and sociology of health and illness. His dissertation, an interview and ethnographic-based examination of how well methadone maintenance treatment aligns with the treatment goals of people on the program, found that many people use the program as a way of dealing with harms and difficulties related to illegal drug use rather than a means to recover from addiction per se. He is currently working on a grant proposal that builds on these findings by exploring ways of improving access to methadone particularly as a response to the recent dramatic increase in opioid-involved overdose.

Camila Gelpí-Acosta received her Ph.D. from the New School University in 2013. Since 2008, she has been engaged in drug use and HIV research in New York City (NYC) and in Puerto Rico. As the Project Director for the CDC’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) study in NYC from 2008 to 2011, she conducted multiple ethnographies with people at high risk for HIV, including migrant Puerto Rican people who inject drugs (PWID). From 2013-2014, she was a postdoc at the Behavioral Scientist Training program (NIDA T32 DA007233), where she received comprehensive support and mentorship for research proposal development. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator of a pilot study seeking to identify the cultural norms behind sustained injection risks of migrant Puerto Ricans in NYC, and to ultimately develop a culturally appropriate risk reduction intervention for this population (R03 DA04189201A1). She is a native Puerto Rican who co-founded a syringe exchange program in Puerto Rico (El Punto en la Montaña, Inc.), and is a consultant of a NIDA R01 study (PI Dombrowski, RO1DA037117) in rural Puerto Rico. In September 2014, she was appointed as Assistant Professor at LaGuardia/CUNY, Criminal Justice Program.

Jennifer Weiting Feng is a doctoral student studying Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Rutgers
University, State University of New Jersey. With a keen interest in empowerment, coping and strengthening opportunities for people with mental health and other chronic conditions along with other marginalized groups, Jennifer utilizes trauma focused approaches in understanding addictive behaviors, drug abuse and other maladaptive behaviors. A common theme that can be found in Jennifer’s research is the concept of strengths-based approaches that serves as the “glue” that unites the different aspects of someone recovering from trauma and drug abuse. Prior to her doctoral career, Jennifer served in various roles in shaping the opportunities and prospects available to people who require special services.

Selected Publications

Feng, J. (2022). Adopting the Power of Strengths Based Approaches: Implications for Empowerment and Success in Community and Education. In R. Williams (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Challenging Deficit Thinking for Exceptional Education Improvement (pp. 240-255). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-8860-4.ch011

M. Dot Fullwood is working toward an EdD in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies at Teachers College. Mr. Fullwood’s primary interests are in conducting descriptive epidemiology of alcohol marketing in NYC subway stations and in applying geographical information systems (GIS) to explore community district spatial relationships. His dissertation focuses on characterizing the content of ads on NYC subway platforms, which depict alcohol products or aggressive or violent behavior. He is assessing the prevalence of these ads with an eye towards understanding how they are targeted in areas where the above ground population is predominantly minority and poor. Dot has published several articles that involve content analyses of print ads and YouTube videos. In one article, he reported that violent ads were found predominantly at platforms for trains heading uptown toward the Bronx, the borough where median household income is lowest. In another, he showed how these train platforms were saturated with advertisements depicting alcoholic beverages. In a short communication publication, he reported that the majority of alcohol advertisements were marketed toward non-Hispanic White audiences and hard liquor advertisements were more frequent than any other alcoholic beverage. In an “Examination of YouTube Videos Related to Synthetic Cannabinoids,” Dot reported that over 7.5 million views of content related to search terms “K2” and “spice” were of consumer produced videos, one-third of which promoted use of K2.

 Selected Publications

Basch C.H., Fullwood M.D., LeBlanc M. Violence in Advertisements in New York City Subway Stations: A Pilot Study. J Community Health. Apr;41(2):387-91

 Fullwood M.D., Kecojevic A., Basch C.H. (2016). Examination of YouTube Videos Related to Synthetic Cannabinoids. Int J Adolesc Med Health. Aug 17.

 Fullwood M.D., Mongiovi J., Hillyer G., Basch C.H., Ethan D., Hammond R. (2016). An advertisement analysis of alcohol products in popular women’s magazines. Front Womens Health. 2016;1(1).

Basch C.H., Fullwood M.D., LeBlanc M. Violence in Advertisements in New York City Subway Stations: A Pilot Study. J Community Health. Apr;41(2):387-91

Joyonna Gamble-George earned a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Biology with Honors in Mathematics from Xavier University of Louisiana, a Master of Health Administration from the University of South Florida College of Public Health, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. Her doctoral research focused on the role of the endocannabinoid system in stress-induced maladaptations in the brain. Joyonna completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Florida regarding methamphetamine effects on bidirectional neuron-microglia communication in the human brain and animal models of HIV-1 infection. Her previous research efforts concerned potential drug therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, the molecular and synaptic consequences of drug abuse and addiction, assessing Florida’s trauma system to guide its future development and improve patient outcomes, and examining the health needs and barriers to affordable and accessible healthcare in rural, medically underserved communities. Joyonna’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Southern Regional Education Board, the United Negro College Fund, and the MERCK  Foundation.

Selected Publications

Dr. Rani George is a Professor of Statistics and Research Methods in the Department of Criminal Justice at Albany State University, Albany, GA. Dr. George has a Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation. She also has post-doctoral training in measurement issues related to substance abuse in the BST program funded by NIDA. Dr. George has extensive grant management experience as Co-Principal Investigator on several multi-year grants including, Family and Community Violence Prevention grant (2003-06); Youth Empowerment Program (2006-09), SAMHSA’s Campus HIV/AIDS prevention program (2011-12), Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention program (2013-16) and SAMHSA’s Minority AIDS Initiative (MAI) funding for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) Partnerships with Community-Based Organizations (2015-2018). Prior to her tenure at Albany State University, Dr. George worked as the Statistician/Health Planner at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, GA.

Dr. George was the Chair of the Department of Counseling and Educational Leadership at Albany State (2005-2008) and Dean of the Graduate School from 2008 to 2011. Currently she serves as the interim Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the newly consolidated Albany State University, which was formed after the consolidation of Albany State University and Darton State College.

Dr. George served as the national research and statistical consultant for the Family and Community Violence Prevention program (2005-06). Dr. George also served as the Evaluator for several federally funded grants on campus. She has several peer reviewed publications and has presented at national and international conferences. Her areas of research interests include science education, science attitudes, behavioral health among college students and school violence. She has made several presentations at regional, national and international conferences.

Ingmar Gorman received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the New School for Social Research after completing an internship at Bellevue Hospital Center. Dr. Gorman specializes in studying populations that have had experiences with psychedelics and other psychoactive compounds. He is the site co-principal investigator on a Phase 3 clinical trial studying the potential psychotherapeutic utility of MDMA for posttraumatic stress disorder. Using data from a previous phase of this trial, he is currently writing a paper on “Facilitation of Posttraumatic Growth in MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” It shows that participants treated with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD showed significant increases in posttraumatic growth. This increase in growth was significantly correlated with a decrease in PTSD symptoms. Dr, Gorman also serves as the Director of the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care Program at the Center for Optimal Living.

Selected Publications

Gorman, I. (2015) Drug-Assisted Psychotherapy. In Ingersoll, E. & Rak, C. (Eds.), Psychopharmacology for Mental Health Professionals: An Integrative Approach. Cengage Learning.

Páleníček, T., Fujáková, M., Brunovský, M., Horáček, J., Bubeníková-Valešová, V., Gorman, I., Balíková, M., Rohanová, M., Rambousek, L., Syslová, K., Kačer, P., Zach, P., Höschl, C. (2013) Behavioral, neurochemical and pharmaco-EEG profiles of the psychedelic drug 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine (2C-B) in rats. Psychopharmacology, 225, 75-95.

Páleníček, T., Brunovský, M., Horáček, J., Fujáková, M., Gorman, I., Tylš, F., Krajča, V. (2010). The effect of ketamine on sensorimotor gating, EEG spectra and coherence – comparison of human and animal data. The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 13, 1, 231-232.

William H. Gottdiener, PhD, ABPP, FIPA, is a licensed and board certified clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and tenured full professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Gottdiener received his PhD in clinical psychology from The New School for Social Research and completed a National Institute on Drug Abuse postdoctoral research fellowship. He is the Director of Clinical Training of the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program of the Graduate Center CUNY that is housed at John Jay College and is the former Director of the John Jay College Addiction Studies Program. He was also previously President of the Psychoanalytic Research Society of Division 39. He has published over 50 articles, book chapters, commentaries, and reviews and is on the editorial boards of the journals Psychoanalytic Psychology, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Psychological Bulletin. He is an APA Fellow in the divisions of Addictions, Clinical Psychology, General Psychology, and Psychoanalysis, and he is a Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was honored by the APA division of psychoanalysis with its prestigious Research and Scholarship Award in 2015.

Edwin Grimsley is a fourth year Ph.D. student in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Edwin’s research explores the 1977 marijuana decriminalization law in New York State as a double-sided shift of favorable treatments for white marijuana users and racialized criminal punishment for black and Latinx marijuana possessors. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, he examines the individual and community costs of race and class-based criminalized policing for public marijuana possession offenses in New York City, specifically in reproducing and further perpetuating inequalities in housing and employment domains. Prior to graduate school, Edwin worked at the Innocence Project where he investigated and crafted DNA exoneration theories and concepts that led to the exoneration of seven wrongfully convicted people from prison. He received his bachelors degree from Wesleyan University.

Selected Publications

Cuevas, Grimsley, E., Mulligan, K., & Chauhan P. (2019). Criminal and Civil Summons Court Appearance: Predictors of Timely Response to Summonses for Lower-Level Offenses in New York City. Journal Of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Law & Society. 20(2): 1-24. Available online at https://scholasticahq.com/criminology-criminal-justice-law-society/

Christian Grov is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Science. His research centers on the sexual health of sexual minority individuals, particularly gay and bisexual men. His work has explored substance use, sexual compulsivity, venues where individuals meet sex partners, and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). His studies have been funded by both the NIH and CDC, with much of this work being in collaboration with the Hunter College Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training (CHEST). He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sex Research and serves on the editorial boardsfor AIDS and Behavior, Archives of Sexual Behavior, and the International Journal of Sexual Health. He has (co)authored over 100 publications including the book In the Company of Men: Inside the Lives of Male Prostitutes (Praeger). He has served as a member of the NYC Department of Health’s HIV Prevention Planning Group as well as the Board of Directors of HOOK, a non-profit dedicated to improving the health and well-being of men who are involved in sex work. In 2016, Dr. Grov became an affiliated faculty member with the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH). Collectively, his body of work seeks to inform HIV and STI prevention, education and health policy.

Link to Publications

Webpage

Google Scholar profile

Sasha Guttentag is a 4th year doctoral candidate in the Epidemiology concentration at NYU Global Public Health. For the last three years, she has worked as a research assistant in the mHealth lab at NYU. Her research includes the design, development, and analyses of health data collected with cell phones and other technologies to evaluate potential harm reduction benefits of e-cigarettes for adult cigarette smokers. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies at NYU, she completed her undergraduate degree in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, during which time she interned with a nutritional research team in Guatemala City. She also completed a Fulbright Fellowship in southern Brazil where she volunteered with the Pelotas Birth Cohort Study, one of the largest cohort studies in low- and middle-income countries.

Shana Harris is a cultural and medical anthropologist whose research focuses on drug use and abuse and health politics and practice in Latin America and the United States.  Her dissertation and postdoctoral research ethnographically examined the adoption and promotion of harm reduction interventions in Argentina.  As a BST Fellow, she worked on projects related to opioid overdose, heroin injection and HIV risk in Colombia, and prescription drug diversion in the eastern United States.  Her current research focuses on medical travel and the use of a psychedelic called ibogaine for drug treatment in Mexico.  Her articles have appeared in several scholarly journals, including Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Human Organization, and Substance Use & Misuse. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida.

University website

Personal website

April Henning Dr April Henning is Associate Professor and Departmental Head of Research for Management within the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University. She is a sociologist specializing in substance use in sport and exercise, anti-doping policy, and gender dynamics in sport and fitness contexts. Her work is broadly international in scope and draws on multiple disciplines. She is author of Online Doping (Palgrave, 2023; with J Andreasson) and Doping: A Sporting History (Reaktion, 2022; with P Dimeo).University website

Heidi Hoefinger has been teaching full time in the Science Department at Berkeley College since completing her BST fellowship in 2014. She teaches courses on Drugs & Drug Policy, Addiction, Human Sexuality, and Public Health. She has won both the 2016 Faculty of the Year Award for Outstanding Scholarship and the 2016 Honors Program Faculty Excellence Award at Berkeley College. Heidi is also a Visiting Scholar in Anthropology at John Jay College, City University of New York, where she is completing a large international study for the European Research Council and Kingston University (UK) on sex, work, migration and trafficking in six cities.  She received her PhD in Social Sciences at the University of London in 2010. Her academic expertise is on gender, sexuality, substance use and public health in Southeast Asia, UK and NYC. Heidi has been invited to speak at Yale University, University of London, University of Kent (UK), United Nations in Cambodia, and in the SUNY/CUNY systems, and is affiliated with the Institute of Southeast Asian affairs at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.  She is the author of the book Sex Love and Money in Cambodia (Routledge 2013), several book chapters, and has academic journal articles in Journal of Drug Education, AIMS Public Health, Journal of Addictive Diseases, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Teaching Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Anti-Trafficking Review. Her work has also appeared in the Huffington Post, BBC, Voice of America, Global Post, Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh Post, Southeast Asia Globe Magazine, Time Out London, London Metro, and Asia Life Magazine.

Link to Full Bio
Link to website

Jennifer Im is a 5^th year Ph.D. candidate in the School Psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She was a research assistant at the New York State Psychiatric Institute from 2016-2017, assisting with clinical trials that examined the effects of ketamine, mindfulness, and motivational enhancement therapy in treating alcohol and substance use disorders. Her dissertation will examine the levels of emotion regulation and substance use among at-risk adolescent mothers and their effects on parenting practices (i.e., inappropriate expectations of children, lack of empathy, corporal punishment, reversal of parent-child roles, and oppression of independence). Jennifer’s research interests also include the determining the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapy for treating psychopathology.

Jessica Jaiswal earned her Ph.D. in Sociomedical Sciences, an interdisciplinary program in social science and public health from Columbia University. Her research interests focus on disparities along the HIV care continuum, particularly engagement in HIV care, adherence to antiretroviral therapy, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP, a daily pill for HIV prevention). As a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University, Dr. Jaiswal is conducting a mixed methods study of how medical and health-related mistrust and stigma influences decisions young men who have sex with men make regarding the use PrEP. As a BST postdoc she is exploring PrEP use among people in medication-assisted therapy (e.g., methadone). Prior to coming to NYU, she conducted a qualitative investigation that explored the social and structural factors related to disengagement from outpatient HIV care among low-income people of color living with HIV, with a focus on mistrust, racism and stigma. Before beginning the BST program, Dr. Jaiswal was a Provost’s Faculty Fellow in the College of Global Public Health at New York University. She is a CDUHR-affiliated investigator at NYU, and a faculty-researcher affiliate at the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies at Rutgers University. Dr. Jaiswal holds an MPH in Behavioral Science and Health Education from Emory University and a BA in Women’s Studies, Native American Studies and Latin American Studies from the University of Michigan.

Selected Publications

Jaiswal, J., Griffin-Tomas, M., Singer, S. N., & Lekas, H. M. (2018). Desire for patient-centered HIV care among inconsistently engaged racial and ethnic minority people living with HIV. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 29(3), 426-438.

 Jaiswal, J., Griffin, M., Singer, S. N., Greene, R. E., Acosta, I. L. Z., Kaudeyr, S. K., Kapadia, F. & Halkitis, P. N. (2018). Structural Barriers to Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Use Among Young Sexual Minority Men: The P18 Cohort Study. Current HIV research.

Jaiswal, J., Singer, S. N., Tomas, M. G., & Lekas, H. M. (2018). Conspiracy Beliefs Are Not Necessarily a Barrier to Engagement in HIV Care Among Urban, Low-Income People of Color Living with HIV. Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities, 1-10.

Jaiswal, J., Singer, S. N., Siegel, K., & Lekas, H. M. (2018). HIV-related ‘conspiracy beliefs’: lived experiences of racism and socio-economic exclusion among people living with HIV in New York City. Culture, health & sexuality, 1-14.

Girardin Jean-Louis, PhD, is Professor of Population Health and Psychiatry at the Center for Healthful Behavior Change in the Department of Population Health at the NYU School of Medicine, and Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-funded PRIDE Summer Institute on Behavioral Medicine and Sleep Disorders Training Institute. He serves on the NHLBI’s Sleep Disorders Research Advisory Board, the Cardiovascular and Sleep Epidemiology (CASE) study section, and the NHLBI Special Emphasis Panel/Scientific Review Group.

Dr. Jean-Louis has been involved in several important NIH-funded studies, which have led to over 225 publications, primarily in sleep and cardio-metabolic diseases, circadian rhythm, and health disparities. His research findings have appeared in 125 scientific conference proceedings and book chapters and 110 peer-reviewed scientific journals. The overarching goal of his research is to address patient-level, provider-level, and system-level barriers hindering adoption of healthful practices. His research focuses on the application of tailored behavioral models to enhance treatment adherence in order to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and early mortality among underserved or disadvantaged minorities.

Dr. Jean-Louis’s research addresses how sociocultural and environmental determinants of health behavior prevent access to adequate care in low-income and black communities, which are disproportionately burdened by adverse cardiovascular outcomes. His current studies aim to identify barriers to diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnea-related metabolic diseases among minorities and to study the efficacy of behavioral models that attempt to improve adherence to recommended therapies. His studies also aim to engage patients, community providers and stakeholders in developing messages to promote health literacy at the community level. By linking community health promotion to the healthcare system, Dr. Jean-Louis’s research and educational programs are helping to achieve objectives of the national mandate to increase health parity in vulnerable communities

Girardin Jean-Louis, PhD, is Professor of Population Health at the Center for Healthful Behavior Change in  the Department of Population Health at the NYU School of Medicine, and Director of the NHLBI-funded PRIDE  Summer Institute on Behavioral Medicine and Sleep Disorders Training Institute.  Dr. Jean-Louis has been involved in several important NIH-funded studies, which have led to over 200 publications, primarily in sleep and cardio-metabolic  diseases, circadian rhythm, and health disparities. His research findings have appeared in 125 scientific conference proceedings and book chapters, and 75  peer-reviewed scientific journals. The overarching goal of his research is to  address patient-level, provider-level, and system-level barriers hindering  adoption of healthful practices. His research focuses on the application of tailored behavioral models to enhance  treatment adherence in order to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and early  mortality among underserved or disadvantaged minorities. Dr. Jean-Louis’ research addresses sociocultural and environmental determinants of health  behavior preventing access to adequate care in disparity communities, which are  disproportionately burdened by adverse cardiovascular outcomes. His current studies aim to delineate barriers hindering diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnea-related metabolic diseases  among minorities and to ascertain efficacy of behavioral models in enhancing  adherence to recommended therapies. Studies also aim to engage patients as well as community providers and stakeholders in developing messages to promote health literacy at the community level. His research and educational programs link community health promotion to the healthcare system, thus  achieving objectives of the national mandate to increase health parity in vulnerable communities.

Alexis Jemal, LCSW, JD, PhD, is assistant professor at Silberman School of Social Work-Hunter College. Dr. Jemal’s mission as a critical social worker is to realize, recognize and respond to oppressive policies and practices to prevent and eliminate domination, exploitation and discrimination that pose barriers to life, wellness, liberty and justice. Dr. Jemal incorporates critical participatory action research to develop and evaluate theoretical frameworks, measures, and multi-level socio-health programs/interventions grounded in critical consciousness theory, restorative justice frameworks, and liberation health models. She also studies social movements and organizations that perpetuate or work to eliminate systemic inequity. Her transformative potential-based efforts aim to: 1) bridge individual and community social work practice by integrating the creative and performing arts with social justice endeavors to end violence and heal from trauma; 2) use social enterprise approaches and social movement techniques to develop alternative and creative methods for raising individual and collective critical consciousness about conditions that cause socio-health disparities; and 3) disseminate and implement programs fostering critical action to address social problems, inequity and structural and interpersonal violence against ethnic, gender and sexual minorities, such as targeted incarceration, that disproportionately impact the health and well-being of marginalized populations. In 2017, Dr. Jemal received grants from four sources – NIMHD, CDUHR, PSC-CUNY, and the NY Women’s Foundation – to conduct her research. She looks forward to applying for additional grant funding and to disseminating her work in both academic and non-academic forums. 

Lauren Jessell, MSW is a Ph.D. student at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work. Her research focuses on prescription drug use among people with mental health and substance use disorders. Lauren seeks to contribute knowledge on prescription drug use within the context of mental health services from multiple stakeholder perspectives. Her past work includes mixed methods research on benzodiazepine use among opioid users and a service user study of psychiatric medication discontinuation. Lauren’s current work and dissertation will explore the use of controlled prescription drugs in the treatment of people with substance use disorders in mental health settings. She works with Dr. Victoria Stanhope on her NIMH-funded clinical trial of Person-Centered Care Planning and Service Engagement.

Selected Readings

Jessell, L., Mateu-Gelabert, P., Guarino, H., Vakharia, S. P., Syckes, C., Goodbody, E., … & Friedman, S. (2017). Sexual violence in the context of drug use among young adult opioid users in New York City. Journal of interpersonal violence, 32(19), 2929-2954.

Nattinee Jitnarin, Ph.D. is a Principal Investigator at the Institute for Biobehavioral Health Research at the National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., based in New York, NY. She completed the Health Psychology doctoral program at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the NIH-funded Behavioral Sciences Training Program in Drug Abuse Research at Public Health Solutions/National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI), NY. Dr. Jitnarin is involved in the conduct and analysis of a number of large cohort studies and randomized controlled trials focusing on firefighters and military personnel. Her research area currently focuses on both health and addictive behaviors research, particularly smoking and smokeless tobacco use. Dr. Jitnarin currently serves as the Principal Investigator of a study focused on smokeless tobacco cessation in the US Fire Service funded by the American Cancer Society.

Tina Jiwatram-Negrón, LMSW, PhD (Columbia University), is an assistant professor of social work and faculty affiliate of the Office on Gender-Based Violence at Arizona State University. Prior to joining ASU, Dr. Jiwatram–Negrón completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on different intersections of gender-based violence, including HIV and HIV risk behaviors (specifically, sex work, substance use), and related trauma/mental health outcomes among socially marginalized women. She specializes in developing and testing interventions to redress violence against women, both domestically and internationally, in partnership with community organizations.

Ashly E. Jordan’s research examines the multi-level factors that create vulnerable populations and health inequity, and the role of interventions and policies to address and alleviate these disparities. Further, her work is highly focused on developing and employing novel metrics for both surveillance and for program and policy evaluation. Her research area centers on the interface of addiction and infections within healthcare systems and by social structures and policy. Specifically, Dr. Jordan’s work has explored the interacting epidemics (syndemics) of opioid misuse, hepatitis C virus, and HIV.
Her dissertation work began with the premise that unlike for HIV, HCV lacked novel metrics to assess prevalence and incidence at various stages of the care continuum (from testing through cure) by group and geographic area. Further, she developed an approach to understanding the role of curative HCV treatment as ‘cure as prevention’ (‘CasP’); extending analogous work in HIV epidemiology (i.e., TasP or treatment as prevention). In particular, she applied the methodology for community viral load assessment from HIV epidemiology to HCV in order to create similar measures for surveillance and evaluation of HCV interventions and programs. This is important because of the biologic plausibility that higher HCV viral load directly contributes to increased viral propagation via non-sterile injection drug use therefore leading to more rapid spread of HCV in areas with higher community viral loads (as was the case with HIV). Her development of the five measures of HCV community viral load, which has recently been published in Journal of Clinical Virology, ranks as a major contribution to public health epidemiology (two additional papers are in press at JID).
Her research goals include extending her work on addiction and substance use disorder, and the opioid, HCV, and HIV syndemic, specifically refining novel HCV metrics for both program and public health efforts, identifying domains and strategies through which the effectiveness of methadone/buprenorphine as HCV prevention could be optimized, and further exploring the interaction of individual risk behaviors and area-level and social-level factors in shaping HCV epidemiology and the epidemiology of the opioid, HCV, and HIV syndemic, through the use of both multi-level and geospatial analyses.

Selected Publications

Maria Khan researches social and behavioral determinants of the sexually transmitted infection (STI) and HIV epidemics in the US with recent work focused on the nexus of mass incarceration, addictions, and STI/HIV. She has conducted a longitudinal cohort study to examine factors driving HIV-related drug and sex risk after release from prison incarceration and buffering effects of social support from primary committed partners. Informed by cohort study findings, members of her team currently are in the process of adapting Project CONNECT, a couples-based HIV prevention intervention, for inmates and their partners that addresses the mood and personality factors that uniquely challenge inmates. She has conducted extensive secondary data analysis research using large nationally-representative data sources, including the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health).
She has been funded to use Add Health to examine the role of incarceration in STI/HIV risk in adolescence and young adulthood and the role of childhood trauma as an underlying factor in adolescent and adulthood substance use, criminal justice involvement, and STI/HIV. Dr. Khan also examines social determinants of STI/HIV in global settings, having worked in Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Jamaica, and, most recently, Haiti to measure mobility and STI/HIV in a semi-urban area located at the epicenter of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

June H. Kim earned a doctorate in Epidemiology from Columbia University. While there, he was also a Communications in Health Epidemiology Fellow (CHEF) at the2x2project.org. His research has focused on the role of stressful life events on alcohol craving, differences in nonmedical prescription drug use by educational attainment, and the association between gambling and risky sexual behaviors among inner-city adolescents. His dissertation was an epidemiological analysis of the association between state medical marijuana laws and opiod mortality. He is currently writing a paper that shows that among opiod users sampled in the National Health Interview Survey between 1986-2009, those residing in Western states with medical marijuana laws were significantly less likely to die from overdoses. He has also published an assessment of relative opioid positivity among fatally injured drivers crashing in states with and without medical marijuana laws. His current work involves investigating the role of medical marijuana as an alternative treatment for non-malignant chronic pain.

Selected Publications

Kim J.H., Santaella-Tenorio J., Mauro C., Wrobel J., Cerdà M., Keyes K.M., Hasin D., Martins S.S., Li G. (2016). State Medical Marijuana Laws and the Prevalence of Opioids Detected Among Fatally Injured Drivers. Am J Public Health. Sep 15:e1-e6. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 27631755.

Williams, A. R., Olfson, M., Kim, J. H., Martins, S. S., & Kleber, H. D. (2016). Older, Less Regulated Medical Marijuana Programs Have Much Greater Enrollment Rates Than Newer ‘Medicalized’ Programs. Health Aff (Millwood), 35(3), 480-488. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0528 (PMCID: In Process, NIHMSID: 778705)

Cerdá, M., Santaella, J., Marshall, B. D., Kim, J. H., & Martins, S. S. (2015). Nonmedical Prescription Opioid Use in Childhood and Early Adolescence Predicts Transitions to Heroin Use in Young Adulthood: A National Study. J Pediatr, 167(3), 605-612 e602. doi: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2015.04.071

Kim, J. H., Martins, S. S., Shmulewitz, D., Santaella, J., Wall, M. M., Keyes, K. M., Hasin, D. S. (2014). Childhood Maltreatment, Stressful Life Events, and Alcohol Craving in Adult Drinkers. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. doi: 10.1111/acer.12473

Martins, S., Kim, J., Chen, L.-Y., Levin, D., Keyes, K., Cerdá, M., & Storr, C. (2014). Nonmedical prescription drug use among US young adults by educational attainment. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 1-12. doi: 10.1007/s00127-014-0980-3

Alexandra Kutnick, MA, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in Applied Psychology from New York University while a BST Predoctoral Fellow and has been an affiliate investigator with the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) since 2017. Her research interests include using mixed methods approaches to study health disparities and to develop structurally competent interventions to ameliorate physical and mental health outcomes among people suffering from poverty. As a Postdoctoral Fellow, Alix has been working with mentors Marya Gwadz, Noelle Leonard and Charles Cleland at NYU on Dr. Gwadz’s NIDA-funded Seek, Test, Treat & Retain intervention study of heterosexuals at high-risk for HIV. She and her mentors have shown that delayed acceptance of an HIV diagnosis is common, and that acceptance is a pre-requisite to successful engagement in medical care (see Kutnick 2017 below). Alix’s dissertation was an interpretive phenomenological analysis of these data, and she is writing a paper from it about a new construct of psychological adaptation to HIV diagnosis, which she developed. Alix is also collaborating with her mentors on a William T Grant funded study, “Advancing Research on Youth Settings by Exploring Program Quality and Outcomes for Runaway/Homeless Youth.” She has a paper in submission based on these data, which shows from the clients’ perspective how effective programs for runway and homeless youth provide critical harm reduction services in a milieu where positive relationships exist between youth and staff, and that staff’s expertise in trauma-informed care is essential to clients’ well-being. Alix is also examining predictors of resilience among runaway and homeless youth with histories of problematic substance use.

Selected Publications

Freeman, R., Gwadz, M., Silverman, E., Kutnick, A.H., Leonard, N., Ritchie, A., Reed, J., & Martinez, B. (2017). Critical race theory as a tool for understanding poor engagement along the HIV care continuum among African American/Black and Hispanic persons living with HIV in the United States: A qualitative exploration. International Journal for Equity in Health, 16(1), 54.

Gwadz, M. V., Cleland, C. M., Leonard, N. R., Bolas, J., Ritchie, A. S., Tabac, L., Freeman, R., Silverman, E., Kutnick, A. H. & Hirsh, M. (2017). Understanding organizations for runaway and homeless youth: A multi-setting quantitative study of their characteristics and effects. Children and Youth Services Review, 73, 398-410.

Kutnick, A. H., Gwadz, M. V., Cleland, C. M., Leonard, N. R., Freeman, R., Ritchie, A., McCright-Gill, T. M., Ha, K., Martinez, B. Y., & the BCAP Collaborative Research Team. (2017). It’s a Process: Reactions to HIV Diagnosis and Engagement in HIV Care among High-Risk Heterosexuals. Frontiers in Public Health, 5, 100.

Gary Kwok is a doctoral candidate in Social Work at Adelphi University. He received his Masters in Mental Health Counseling and General Psychology from CUNY City College of New York. During his clinical training at a local community clinic, Gary became interested in the impact of income disparities on behavioral health outcomes among immigrant families. Thus, his dissertation work focuses on how human and social capital, mediated by family acculturation patterns, influence substance use and sexual risk behaviors among adolescents from immigrant families. Gary is also interested in program evaluation. He served as a data analyst for Center for Innovations in the Advancement of Care at NYU Langone Health. Led by Dr Peri Rosenfeld, Gary was part of a multiphase program evaluation team that assessed the NICHE program (Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders), an international nursing education program designed to improve geriatric care in healthcare organizations. Gary also works under Drs. Chrisann Newransky and Stavroula Kyriakakis on a study funded by the U.S. Administration for Children and Families where they are assessing the efficacy of Project FORWARD (Facing Obstacles in Relationships and Work with Action, Resources, Direction), a program that delivers evidence-based interventions to help challenged and at-risk youth and young adults to develop relationship skills in order to build both strong family functioning and economic stability.

Zoe Lindenfeld is a Ph.D student in Public Health Policy and Management at New York University School of Global Public Health. Zoe’s research interests include health care delivery reform, behavioral health and substance use disorders, and care integration. Most recently, her work has focused on how new policies passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as regulatory and payment policies that enabled the prescribing of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) via telemedicine, increased access to care for vulnerable populations. An additional recent research focus is the integration of harm reduction approaches into medical settings to improve outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders. Other topics of research include drug courts, social determinants of health, and the intersection of chronic disease and substance use disorders. Zoe received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and worked at John Snow Inc. as a Research Associate before beginning her graduate studies.

Selected Publications

Lindenfeld Z, Kim S, Chang JE. Assessing the effectiveness of problem-solving courts on the reduction of overdose deaths in the United States: A difference-in-difference study. Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 2022 Sep 1;4:100088.

Lindenfeld Z, Berry C, Albert S, Massar R, Shelley D, Kwok L, Fennelly K, Chang JE. Synchronous Home-Based Telemedicine for Primary Care: A Review. Medical Care Research and Review. 2022 May 5.

Chang JE, Lindenfeld Z, Thomas T, Waldman J, Griffin J. Patient Characteristics Associated With Phone Versus Video Telemedicine Visits for Substance Use Treatment During COVID-19. Journal of Addiction Medicine. 2022 Feb 22.

Chang JE, Lindenfeld Z, Albert SL, Massar R, Shelley D, Kwok L, Fennelly K, Berry CA. Telephone vs. Video Visits During COVID-19: Safety-Net Provider Perspectives. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine: JABFM.
2021;34(6):1103-14.

Rebecca Linn-Walton, PhD, LCSW is the Director of Planning, Research, and Evaluation at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES) in New York City. Her research is focused on clinical engagement with justice-involved youth and adults with behavioral health needs. Shew has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences. In  addition, she is adjunct faculty at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service. She joined CASES  in 2015 to build a research and evaluation department. Her department’s work enhances agency capacity to conduct internal evaluations of program effectiveness and adherence to evidence based practice models, as well collaboration with educational institutions.  Since coming to CASES in 2015, Dr. Linn-Walton has increased their revenue by 10% in additional funding for evidence-based programming and intervention development. Most recently, the agency was awarded a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to Partner with John Jay School of Criminal Justice to create a youth community engagement intervention.

Buffie Longmire-Avital, is an associate professor of psychology and the coordinator of the African and African-American Studies interdisciplinary program at Elon University. A graduate of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; she is an applied developmental psychologist with a health and well-being focus. Broadly, her research interests focus on how psychosocial and cultural factors contribute to health disparities that impact minority emerging adults. Longmire-Avital’s current research is twofold: First, she examines the relationships among psychosocial factors (specifically racial identity, perceived partner scarcity, and sexual assertiveness) on HIV/AIDS risk behaviors for sexually active emerging adult Black women and men. Second, she explores how chronic minority status stressors (e.g., daily encounters with discrimination and microaggressions) play a part in the development of unhealthy lifestyle behaviors (e.g. disorganized eating, substance misuse), depression, and resiliency. Her data collection takes place in non-laboratory settings in partnership with members of the community through various community venues, including online social networking and blog sites.

In addition to her extensive research and teaching experience, Dr. Longmire-Avital has been an advocate for the inclusion of students from historical underrepresented backgrounds in undergraduate research. Dr. Longmire-Avital was recently selected to become Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning scholar to pursue this and related critical issues regarding the mentorship and access to opportunity students from historical underrepresented backgrounds encounter while navigate academic spaces.

Link to website

Kate McLean is an Assistant Professor in Administration of Justice at Penn State Greater Allegheny. She completed her PhD in Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and MS in Population Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research concerns the uneasy intersection of criminal justice, and public health approaches to illicit drug use; a recent project has considered the socio-structural underpinnings of opioid use and overdose in the Rust Belt. She is currently collaborating on a study looking at the social networks of individuals who use opioids in rural Pennsylvania.

Link to website

Keith Morgen is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Counseling at Centenary University (Hackettstown, New Jersey) where he teaches in the undergraduate Psychology and graduate Counseling programs and is a former recipient of the Centenary Distinguished Teaching Award.  Dr. Morgen’s research on substance use, trauma, and prisoner mental health has been published in major scholarly journals such as Traumatology, Therapeutic Communities, The Gerontologist, The Professional Counselor, Journal of Correctional Healthcare, Journal of Addictions and Offender Counseling, Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Applied Research in Quality of Life, Journal of Drug Issues, and the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education.  Dr. Morgen is the author of the text Substance Use Disorders and Addictions (Sage) and the upcoming forensic psychology text Aging Behind Prison Walls (Columbia University Press). In addition, Dr. Morgen presents papers at major conferences such as the American Counseling Association, American Public Health Association, American Psychological Association, and the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.  Dr. Morgen is a former President (2013-14) of the addictions and offender counseling division of the American Counseling Association (the International Association of Addictions and Offenders).  Dr. Morgen is a Licensed Professional Counselor (New Jersey) and Approved Clinical Supervisor and practices counseling part-time at Discovery Psychotherapy and Wellness Centers (Morristown, New Jersey). Dr. Morgen received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology (Lehigh University) with his APPIC/APA Internship at the New Jersey Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, VA Medical Center in East Orange, New Jersey where he trained in inpatient/outpatient substance abuse treatment rotations.  Dr. Morgen was a BST Pre-Doctoral Fellow (2001-2003) and Post-Doctoral Fellow (2003-2004). 

Link to CV

Link to website

Madhuvanti (Maddy) Murphy is the Deputy Dean for Research & Graduate Studies and Lecturer in Public Health at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill. She holds an MPH from the University of Miami, and a Doctorate in Public Health (Sociomedical Sciences) from Columbia University in New York City. She is currently involved in teaching, research and curriculum development, and since joining the UWI faculty in 2011 has contributed to the development of the Master of Public Health Programme.

Dr. Murphy is a past recipient of a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) pre-doctoral fellowship, and has been a co-investigator on more than 10 research grants, including grants funded by the NIH and the IDRC. Her expertise as a qualitative researcher has led her to publish and present on a wide range of public health issues, including adolescent drug use prevention, breast cancer, and social determinants of non-communicable diseases within Caribbean populations. Since moving to Barbados, Dr. Murphy has also co-founded and served on the Board of Charity Chicks Barbados, an organization which aims to make a positive impact on the local community through fundraising, volunteerism and awareness of current health-related issues.

Link to website

Chigozie Nkwonta received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and post graduate diploma in Midwifery from Madonna University, Nigeria, a Master of Science in Nursing specializing in Maternal and Child Health from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and a Ph.D. in Nursing from University of South Carolina. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the South Carolina Smart State Center of Health Quality in the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Her dissertation was a community-based intervention to increase HPV vaccination and Cervical Screening in Nigeria. In her dissertation and recent projects, she explored the impact of stigma and sociocultural practices on health service utilization and treatment adherence. Her research seeks to understand the impact of intersectional stigmas on treatment adherence and mental health of substance users who are HIV positive or at risk of HIV. She is particularly interested in developing and testing intervention to address these needs.

Nkwonta, C. A., & Harrison, S. E. (2021). HIV knowledge, risk perception, and testing behaviors among college students in South Carolina. Journal of American College Health, 1-8.

Adegboyega, A., Dignan, M., Sha, S., Nkwonta, C., & Williams, L. B. (2021). Psychological factors among Appalachian women with abnormal Pap results. The Journal of Rural Health.

Nkwonta C. A., Deanne M. H., Tisha M. F., & Luchok, K. (2020). Increasing HPV Vaccination and Cervical Cancer Screening in Nigeria: An Assessment of Community-Based Educational Interventions. International Quarterly of Community Health Education. 2020;41(1):89-99. doi:10.1177/0272684X20916611

Nkwonta, C., Dawson, R. M., & Addegboyega, A. (2020). “I don’t think I have a chance to get it”: international university student HPV knowledge and preventive behaviors. Journal of American College Health. DOI: 10.1080/07448481.2020.1740232

Elewonibi B. & Nkwonta C. A. (2020). The association of chronic diseases and mammography among Medicare beneficiaries living in Appalachia. Women’s Health, 16, 1745506520933020.

Ijeoma Opara is a Ph.D. candidate at Montclair State University. She received her Masters of Social Work from NYU and a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from New York Medical College. Ijeoma’s dissertation research involves examining protective factors for sexual risk behavior and drug use among Black and Hispanic girls. She utilizes a strengths-based approach in her research and practice. As such, her dissertation focuses on highlighting resiliency in ethnic minority families and their role in HIV/AIDS and drug use prevention. She is also working as a research fellow on two SAMHSA-funded programs: Paterson Coalition Against Substance Abuse, a Drug Free Communities project, and Project Community Organizing for Prevention and Empowerment (Project COPE), which is a Minority AIDS Initiative prevention program aimed at reducing HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and viral hepatitis among ethnic minority youth.  Before pursuing her doctorate, Ijeoma was a youth and family therapist in New York City where she served court involved youth and their families. While pursuing her Masters at NYU, she received SAMHSA/HRSA funding to work as an Integrated Primary and Behavioral Health Care Fellow with homeless women of color living with co-occurring disorders in NYC. With funding from the CDC/RISE program, Ijeoma also interned at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to examine the effects of secondhand tobacco smoke and asthma morbidity among African American children.  

Kelly Quinn, Ph.D., MPH, completed her Ph.D. in social epidemiology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010 and a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention in 2013. She joined the faculty of NYU Langone Health as Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Population Health in 2015 and has been an affiliated investigator with the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) since 2016. Kelly’s research focused on the social determinants of health, and she has an expertise in infectious and chronic health outcomes in the United States and Africa. She became a BST Postdoctoral Fellow in 2017 to gain additional expertise in substance use, particularly opioid misuse and injection. As a BST fellow, Dr. Quinn has been working with mentors, Pedro Mateu-Gelabert and Honoria Guarino, at National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., on a NIDA-funded study of young opioid users in New York City. They are currently exploring risk factors for Hepatitis C infection, overdose, and transition from prescription opioids to heroin injection, incorporating a social determinants perspective, including a focus on the role of adverse childhood events and gender disparities in mental health. Kelly also continues to collaborate with Dr. Maria Khan, a former BST Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU Langone Health, on Dr. Khan’s NIDA-funded study of adverse childhood events and substance abuse, sexual risk, and criminal justice outcomes in adulthood using data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Kelly has used these data to demonstrate a dose-response relationship between trauma in childhood and non-medical opioid use and injection drug use in adulthood (see Quinn 2016 below), and has undertaken an analysis to identify psychological and behavioral mediators of those relationships.

Selected Publications

Scheidell, J.D., Quinn, K., McGorray, S.P,. Frueh, B.C., Beharie, N., Cottler, L.B., Khan, M.R. (2018). Childhood traumatic experiences and the association with marijuana and cocaine use in adolescence through adulthood. Addiction, 113(1):44-56.

Scheidell, J.D., Kumar, P.C., Campion, T., Quinn, K., Beharie, N., McGorray, S.P., Khan, M.R. (2017). Childhood sexual abuse and HIV-related substance use and sexual risk across the life-course among males and females. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 26(5), 519-534.

Quinn, K., Boone, L., Scheidell, J.D., Mateu-Gelabert ,P, McGorray, S., Beharie, N., Kottler, L.B., Khan, M.R. (2016). The relationships of childhood trauma and adulthood prescription pain reliever misuse and injection drug use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 169, 190-198.

Kathleen Ragsdale As a Masters student, I got hooked on international field work during an epidemiological head lice study among the Guna Yala indigenos on the San Blas Islands of Panama, Central America. When I started my PhD, I intended to be an ethnographic film maker, and planned to work with women war refugees. But early in my PhD program, I received funding to study how gender and power dynamics impacted HIV prevention among brothel-based sex workers in the Caribbean. This research changed my career path and ignited my passion for research on how gender equity and other sociocultural factors impact health-related decisions and outcomes, particularly for vulnerable women and youth. As an applied medical anthropologist, I am committed to multimethods research and the use of public health and social theory to provide evidence for policy and societal impacts. For more than 15 years, my international and domestic research on health disparities has focused on community-based and culturally informed evaluation and culturally tailored interventions for public health promotion. Research areas include sexual risk behavior, gender disparities, food insecurity, nutrition education for infant health, eHealth interventions, and program evaluation among minority and vulnerable populations. My research has been supported by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA), UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and numerous foundations and university-level grantors. In addition to numerous studies conducted in the US, my geographic experience includes Belize, Botswana, Costa Rica, Ghana, Mozambique, Panama, and the US Virgin Islands.

Geoffrey Ream

Link to website

Pamela Ruiz earned her doctorate in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research focuses on drug trafficking and violence among gangs in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras). Her dissertation utilized mixed-methods to examine the evolution of two major gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Dr. Ruiz was a Fulbright Fellow to El Salvador and a Dean K. Harrison Fellow to Honduras and Guatemala. As a postdoctoral fellow, she is conducting an assessment of drug abuse in Guatemala and working on grant proposals with the hope of implementing intervention programs in the Northern Triangle of Central America. 

Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D.  Dubbed the “prodigy of drug politics” by NBC News, author, consultant, former advisor to three U.S. presidential administrations, affiliated fellow at Yale University, and adjunct professor, Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., has researched and implemented drug policy for 20 years. In 2011 he stepped down as senior advisor in President Obama’s drug policy
office, having been the only drug policy staffer to have ever served as a political appointee in a Democrat and Republican administration. He has been featured in virtually every major media publication and news channel on the subject of drug policy and in 2013 published his first book, Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana, (Beaufort). He is the co-founder, with former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, and President of SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), the only national organization with a staff in Washington DC working exclusively on smart marijuana policy issues. He has a doctorate from Oxford University and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Link to CV

Bright Sarfo is a Research Associate for MEF Associates and has over a decade of experience in research, program evaluation, and data analysis. He has a strong background in implementation research, process evaluation, building assessments, quantitative and qualitative methods, and behavioral intervention development. He has applied his skills to programs and research projects in the areas of public health, fatherhood, workforce development, financial empowerment, and criminal justice.

Bright’s work focuses on building evidence-based practice in the areas of fatherhood and healthy relationships using rigorous research designs, process analysis, and capacity building strategies. At MEF Bright has worked on national evaluation projects for the Department of Labor and the Administration for Children and Families. He has worked as a lead liaison for local organizations to conduct process studies and provide technical assistance in the form of training, evaluation planning and site monitoring. Bright has held leadership positions on projects examining fatherhood interventions, child support enforcement practices, economic empowerment initiatives, and workforce development programs.

Bright is currently working on several studies using random assignment including Building Bridges and Bonds, the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt, and an evaluation of the Health Professional Opportunity Grants.

Bright received his PhD from Columbia University and earned his MSW in 2008. He earned his BA in Psychology from Stony Brook University. Bright is also a photographer and consistently ensures he captures all of the office’s special events in great fashion.

Rashi Shukla is a Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Oklahoma. Dr. Shukla’s research interests include examining drug use and decision-making, drug policy, and white collar crime. Since 2005, she has served as Principal Investigator of a multi-method study of the methamphetamine problem. She has presented her research at state, national, and international conferences. Her research has been published in Substance Use and Misuse, Crime Prevention and Community Safety, the Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, the Security Journal, and the International Journal of Drug Policy. Dr. Shukla was awarded the UCO College of Liberal Arts Faculty Member of the Year 2013-2014. Dr. Shukla’s book Methamphetamine: A Love Story was published by the University of California Press in 2016.

Link to UCO website

Link to UC Press Book Page

Joy D Scheidell, MPH, is a Ph.D. student in epidemiology at NYU School of Medicine and became a BST Predoctoral Fellow in 2017. Joy has worked with her mentor, Dr. Maria R Khan, Associate Professor of Population Health at NYU School of Medicine, and a former BST Postdoctoral Fellow, for over five years on a variety of projects related to sexually transmitted infection and HIV, substance use, and criminal justice involvement. In a recently completed NIDA-funded longitudinal cohort study conducted among African American men released from prison in North Carolina, Joy examined mental disorders and STI/HIV-related drug use and sexual behaviors, highlighting heightened risk among men with borderline personality disorder. Joy also collaborated with Dr. Samuel Friedman to explore group sex event participation and its link to STIs. In an ongoing NIDA-funded secondary data analysis study, Joy has used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to explore the effects of childhood traumatic experiences on sexual risk behavior, substance use, and criminal justice involvement across the life course. Findings, published in several journals, including Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, have highlighted the detrimental effects of specific forms of childhood trauma, such as parental incarceration and sexual abuse, as well as the cumulative burden of total traumatic experiences. Joy is currently exploring pathways that link childhood trauma to later criminal justice involvement. She is also beginning a new NIDA-funded study with Dr. Khan to examine the effect of various forms of criminal justice involvement, including stop-and-frisk, arrest, and incarceration, on HIV risk among minority men who have sex with men. In her dissertation, Joy will focus on the sexual and reproductive health of women who use drugs and are involved in the criminal justice system.

Selected publications

Scheidell J.D., Quinn K., McGorray S.P., Frueh B.C., Beharie N.N., Cottler L.B., Khan M.R. (2018). Childhood traumatic experiences and the association with marijuana and cocaine use in adolescence through adulthood. Addiction,113(1):44-56.

Scheidell J.D., Friedman S.R., Golin C.E., Wohl D.A., Khan M.R. (2017). Group sex event participation: A link to sexually transmitted infection risk among African American heterosexual men incarcerated in North Carolina. Sex Transm Infect, 93(2):144.

Scheidell J.D., Kumar P.C., Campion T., Quinn K., Beharie N., McGorray S.P., Khan M.R. (2017). Childhood sexual abuse and HIV-related substance use and sexual risk across the life-course among males and females. J Child Sex Abus, 26(5):519-534.

Scheidell J.D., Lejuez C.W., Golin C.E., Hobbs M.M., Wohl D.A., Adimora A.A., Khan M.R. (2016). Borderline personality disorder symptom severity and sexually transmitted infection and HIV risk in African American incarcerated men. Sex Transm Dis, 43(5):317-323.

Skultip (Jill) Sirikantraporn is a licensed psychologist in California and New York with research interests in trauma, resilience, and positive psychology in the context of cross-cultural and international psychology. She is assistant professor in the PsyD program at California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP)-San Diego, teaching multicultural competence development, qualitative methods of research, and intellectual assessment. She has passion in working with individuals from various cultural groups by honoring their unique ways of healing and growing, especially after trauma and major life crises (posttraumatic growth). She has published on the topic of resilience among marginalized and underrepresented populations, including injection drug users, patients with co-occurring disorders, new immigrants, and Southeast Asian immigrants. Originally from Southeast Asia (Thailand), she has several on-going projects collaborating with professionals in Thailand, Cambodia, and India to expand and deepen psychological knowledge in the context of these cultures. She is also a registered yoga instructor and interested in using holistic, mind-body integration as part of therapy and self-healing.

Link to CV

Vivian Smith 

Chair and Associate Professor of Criminology

Her experience as a National Institute of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse postdoctoral fellow, fostered her passion for collaborative and interdisciplinary research, while grounding her in both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Her passion for understanding women’s criminality, has led Smith to publish on issues related to the war on drugs against women. Smith has also been involved with research projects involving females with substance abuse diagnoses and histories of sexual and physical abuse.

She also conducted research involving the reentry of formerly incarcerated persons, including a process evaluation of a Community Collaborative Board (a board in charge of creating a health intervention for returning offenders). The study was part of a larger project spearheaded by Dr. Liliane Windsor. This work was published in Health Promotion Practice and received the Sarah Mazelis Paper of the Year Award at the Society for Public Health Education Conference in 2016.

She was part of a multiphase women and reentry project, where she collected and analyzed archival data from a women’s prison. She also created and facilitated a reentry survey instrument for women soon to be released from prison and halfway houses.

Smith has presented her research at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, American Society of Criminology Conferences, and at the annual meeting for the Society of Study of Social Problems.

Her experience informed her teaching interests and laid the foundation for a career focused on providing students with the critical skills to evaluate empirical research in order to create an informed opinion.

She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. Her classes include Statistics, Corrections, Reentry, Drugs in the Criminal Justice System, Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and Senior Capstone.

Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in criminology and a certificate in African American studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. She earned a master’s and doctoral degree in criminal justice from the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice.

Jeffrey Steen has a PhD in social work from New York University.  He is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, with professional experience in clinical and administrative roles in behavioral health settings, including housing programs and health centers.  He was Contributing Investigator with the Social Workers’ Self-Reported Wellness study, which examined the health and workplace experiences of over 6,000 licensed social workers.  With colleagues Drs. Lala Straussner and Evan Senreich, he has published several papers and presented widely on study findings, and is presently preparing a book proposal to disseminate additional study results.  He is also working with Drs. Martin Downing and Ellen Benoit on the Giving Men a Voice study, a mixed methods project which explored childhood sexual experiences and current wellbeing among Black and Latino MSM and their service providers. He is Adjunct Instructor at Metropolitan College of New York and Simmons University.

Kelly Szott, PhD is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Sociology/Anthropology Department at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. She also teaches courses in the Human Ecology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs at Earlham. Kelly completed her Ph.D. in sociology from Syracuse University in May 2015 and was awarded the All-University Doctoral Prize for her dissertation “Governing through Health: The Biomedical and Public Health Management of Drug Using Bodies,” a qualitative study of constructions and practices of health among people who inject drugs and their health care providers in New York City. She recently published a book chapter on the genealogy of the risk category “injection drug user” and organized a conference panel on the history of harm reduction and public health at the 2016 History of Science Society meeting, for which she offered a paper presentation as well.  She is currently conducting a qualitative interview study that investigates the sociology of heroin and prescription opioid use and syringe exchange in the context of a small Midwestern city.

Keyanna Taylor graduated from Baylor University in Spring 2021 with Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health and a Master of Public Health Degree with a concentration in Community Health. She is a 3rd year Doctor of Philosophy student in Epidemiology at the University of California – Los Angeles. She is an early career researcher and epidemiologist in training whose research interests lie in quantitative examinations of intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality and health outcomes. She is passionate about quantifying the impacts of social and structural stigma on the health and wellbeing of historically marginalized populations.

Azure Thompson is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Community Health Sciences and Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health.  She holds a DrPH and MPH in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University and a B.A. in journalism from Howard University.  Prior to her appointment in the School of Public Health, Dr. Thompson was Associate Director of Policy Research and Analysis and Research Scientist at The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.  She has also been on faculty as an Associate Research Scientist in Psychiatry and a scholar in the NIH ORWH’s career development program in women’s health and addictive behaviors at Yale University, a NIMH postdoctoral trainee in mental health services research at Rutgers University, a NIDA predoctoral trainee in drug abuse research at the National Development and Research Institute, Inc. and a W.K. Kellogg Fellow in Health Policy Research.   

Dr. Thompson’s research focuses on the social determinants of substance use and related psychiatric problems, with a particular emphasis on racial/ethnic minority women in urban settings.  She is particularly interested in factors associated with substance use among black women including the influence of neighborhood and policy environments.   She does this research by conducting epidemiological studies using nationally representative data sets, as well as studies using primary data collected through survey, qualitative and field research methods.  Through this research, she seeks to inform the development of programs and policies that contribute to the elimination of health disparities, particularly those related to addiction.  

Sarah Tosh is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on the intersections between drug policy, criminal justice policy, and immigration policy. Her dissertation “Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and the Legal Construction of the ‘Criminal Alien,’” explores the “aggravated felony,” an oft-overlooked legal category that provides the basis for the removal of thousands of immigrants each year, very often due to previous drug convictions. Through historical analysis, courtroom ethnography, and in-depth interviews with immigration lawyers and judges, Sarah’s project aims to better understand the law’s development, its effects on the practice of immigration law, and the implications of drug convictions for immigrant offenders. Sarah is a recipient of the Graduate Center’s David Garth Dissertation Award in Public Policy, the Graduate Center’s Pollis Dissertation Fellowship, and previously, the Graduate Center’s Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship. She worked as a research assistant at National Research Development Institute (NDRI) from 2016-2017, and was a summer research fellow with Vera Institute of Justice in 2016. Sarah’s co-authored chapter, “The Sociology of Vindictiveness and the Deportable Alien,” will appear in the forthcoming volume Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment (eds. David Brotherton and Phil Kretsedemas, Columbia University Press). This chapter, based on ethnographic research and co-authored with her professor David Brotherton, employs the sociological concept of vindictiveness to look at various aspects of immigrant detention and deportation in the United States, including the experiences of immigrants convicted of drug crimes.

Tarlise (Tarlie) Townsend received her joint PhD in Health Services  Organization & Policy and Sociology from the University of Michigan. Her interests lie at the intersection of pain, disability, and opioid use, with an emphasis on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities. In her dissertation and more recent projects, she studies racial/ethnic disparities in the effects of policies that aim to reduce opioid-related harms. In other dissertation work, Tarlie evaluated the cost-effectiveness of naloxone distribution to laypeople in comparison with first responders, concluding that equipping all groups with naloxone is cost-saving from a societal perspective, and that distribution to people likely to experience or witness overdose should be prioritized. In other work, she examines the mechanisms underlying disability and educational disparities in disability, and assesses trends in opioid prescribing for management of cancer-related pain.

Selected publications

Townsend, T., Blostein, F., Doan, T., Madson-Olson, S., Galecki, P., & Hutton, D. W. (2020). Cost-effectiveness analysis of alternative naloxone distribution strategies: First responder and lay distribution in the United States. International Journal of Drug Policy, 75, 102536.

Mauri, A. I., Townsend, T. N., & Haffajee, R. L. (2020). The Association of State Opioid Misuse Prevention Policies With Patient‐and Provider‐Related Outcomes: A Scoping Review. The Milbank Quarterly, 98(1), 57-105.

Townsend, T., Mehta, N. (In press). Pathways to educational disparities in disability incidence: The contributions of excess BMI, smoking, and manual labor involvement. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.

Townsend, T., Mehta, N. (Accepted). Contributions of obesity and cigarette smoking to incident disability: A longitudinal analysis. Preventive Medicine.

Caitlin Trombley (Halligan) received her PhD in Sociology from Western Michigan University. Her doctoral research focused on how nonreligious individuals with substance use disorders navigate recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, specifically looking at the various barriers they faced related to their nonreligious identities. Her research interests are centered around recovery experiences among stigmatized and marginalized groups, such as the nonreligious, women, LGBTQIA+, and people of color.

Selected publications

Halligan, Caitlin. 2021. “Being Nonreligious in the United States” in Bloomsbury Religion in North America, edited by Jesse M. Smith and Ryan T. Cragun. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Smith, Jesse and Caitlin Halligan. 2021. “Making Meaning without a Maker: Secular Consciousness through Narrative and Cultural Practice.” Sociology of Religion 82(1): 85- 110.

Scheitle, Christopher P., Katie Corcoran, and Caitlin Halligan. 2018. “The Rise of the Nones and the Changing Relationships Between Identity, Belief, and Behavior.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 33(3): 567-579.

Rebecca Umbach received a doctorate in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research centers on the role of environment as it pertains to neuropsychological and cognitive functioning. Her dissertation consisted of three papers examining various ways in which impaired cognitive functioning is related to antisocial behavior. In collaboration with Noelle Leonard, a CDUHR affiliate investigator, she found that incarceration negatively and significantly reduced emotion regulation capacity in incarcerated adolescent males. In another study, she found that neighborhood disadvantage was negatively associated with executive functioning in an at-risk sample of pre-adolescents, which was in turn associated with higher rates of antisocial behavior. She also used nationwide data to find that small changes in sleep duration were significant enough to change rates in assaults following the shift to and from Daylight Saving Time. She is currently writing a paper with Noelle Leonard which compares risk-taking behavior in healthy adolescents, non-violent incarcerated adolescents, and violent incarcerated adolescents.

In addition to looking at risk factors for substance use and impaired cognition, Dr. Umbach hopes to use her time as a BST postdoctoral fellow alongside mentor Noelle Leonard to explore potential treatments and interventions to improve cognitive functioning, particularly in at-risk populations and youth.

Manuscripts:

Umbach, R., Raine, A., & Leonard, N.R. (2017). Cognitive Decline as a Result of Incarceration and the Effects of a CBT/Mindfulness Training Intervention: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 45(1), 31-55.

Umbach, R., Raine, A., & Ridgeway, G. (2017). Aggression and sleep: a daylight saving time natural experiment on the effect of mild sleep loss and gain on assaults. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 13(4), 439-453.

Umbach, R., Raine, A., Gur, R.C., & Portnoy, J. (2017). Neighborhood Disadvantage and Neuropsychological Functioning as Part Mediators of the Race—Antisocial Relationship: A Serial Mediation Model. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 34(2), 481-512.

Umbach, R., Berryessa, C.M., & Raine, A. (2015). Brain Imaging Research on Psychopathy: Implications for Punishment, Prediction, and Treatment in Youth and Adults. Journal of Criminal Justice, 43(4), 295-306.

Adelya Urmanche, MA, is a doctoral student of clinical psychology at the Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University. Her dissertation with Drs. J. Christopher Muran and Denise Hien centers on psychotherapy process and outcome in Seeking Safety, a treatment approach for comorbid PTSD and alcohol use disorder. She is also involved with various drug-related research at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH). Currently, using primarily qualitative and mixed-method approaches, she is examining the experiences of people who use drugs in their adaptation to the increase of non-pharmaceutical fentanyl in the NYC drug markets. Adelya is engaged with the Brief Psychotherapy Research Program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel and has previously worked with NYU Center for Neural Science. Interested in bridging the gap between substance abuse treatment, research, and policy, she wants to focus her efforts on harm reduction practices, psychotherapy research, and increasing access to empirically based substance abuse treatment.

Urmanche, A.A., & Muran, J. C. (2020). Abstract minimal impressionism: Thoughts on evidence, intervention, and training. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. 10.1111/cpsp.12338

Urmanche, A.A. (2020). Bearing witness to the epidemic: Supporting clinicians after a client overdose death. Practice Innovations. Advance online publication. 10.1037/pri0000115

Konova, A., Lopez-Guzman, S., Urmanche, A., Ross, S., Louie, K., Rotrosen, J., & Glimcher, P. (2019). Computational Markers of Risky Decision-Making Identify Temporal Windows of Vulnerability to Use Opioids: A Longitudinal Study in a Real-World Clinical Setting. JAMA Psychiatry. Advance online publication. 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.4013

Urmanche, A.A., Oliveira, J.T., Gonçalves, M., Eubanks, C.F., & Muran, J.C. (2019). Ambivalence, resistance, and alliance ruptures in psychotherapy: It’s complicated. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 36(2), 139-147. 10.1037/pap0000237

Elizabeth Needham Waddell, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health and the OHSU School of Medicine. She works closely with addiction medicine and behavioral health service providers to identify best practices for integration and to develop a greater understanding of the barriers and facilitators of effective treatment for adults cycling through jail and prison. She is principal investigator on a CDC research grant “Reducing Overdose after Release from Incarceration” (ROAR), which combines medications for addiction treatment with support from certified recovery mentors for women as they are released from prison. The project’s evaluation includes
a first-time linkage of Oregon’s Corrections and Health Authority datasets to assess overdose risk among justice-involved adults. She is an MPI on the New York University Hub of NIDA’s Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN), leading the Oregon sites of a national trial comparing extended release buprenorphine and extended release naltrexone in a sample of justice involved adults. She is co-Investigator on the Western States Node of the NIDA Clinical Trials network and two NIH studies focused on barriers to treatment among people who currently inject drugs: “Peer-Based Retention of people who Use Drugs in Rural Research” and the “Oregon HIV/Hepatitis and Opioid Prevention and Engagement (OR-HOPE) Study.”

Barbara C. Wallace, PhD. is a New York State Licensed Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist, tenured full Professor of Health Education, and Director of the Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education within the Department of Health and Behavior Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University. In addition, Dr. Wallace is Director of Health Equity for the Center for Health Equity and Urban Science Education (CHEUSE), and Director of the Research Group on Equity in Health (formerly the Research Group on Disparities in Health). For her outstanding and unusual contributions to the field of psychology, Dr. Wallace has been honored with the status of Fellow within both Division 50 (Addictive Behaviors) and Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues) of the American Psychological Association. Among her approximately 100 publications, there are 7 books/edited volumes, as well peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters in edited volumes, and influential reports. For example, Dr. Wallace is author of Making Mandated Addiction Treatment Work (Rowman and Littlefield) and editor of Toward Equity in Health: A New Global Approach to Health Disparities (Springer Publications)—as just two of her acclaimed publications.

She graduated from Princeton University (AB, 1980; Major: Psychology, Certificate in Afro-American Studies), the City University of New York (Ph.D., 1985; Clinical Psychology), and completed post-doctoral training with NDRI (Narcotic and Drug Research, Inc., now National Development Research Institutes, 1986).

Suzan M. Walters earned her doctorate in Sociology from Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on how social networks, substance use, gender, sexualities, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic class impact health outcomes, specifically related to HIV prevention. Suzan’s doctoral research examined inequalities in awareness about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among populations at risk for HIV, suggesting that social networks are an effective means for increasing PrEP awareness. As a postdoctoral fellow, Suzan is exploring the feasibility of PrEP for persons who inject drugs, including how to increase their readiness for PrEP. In addition, she will be working on manuscripts focusing on how stigma creates barriers to healthcare access among persons who inject drugs. Suzan has worked as an ethnographer for the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System, a program director for the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, and a research fellow for AIDS Foundation Chicago. Her research has been supported by the American Sociological Association, Sociologists for Women and Society, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Sociology AIDS Network, and Stony Brook University.

Selected publications

Walters, Suzan M, Kathleen H Reilly, Alan Neaigus, and Sarah Braunstein. 2017a. “Awareness of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among women who inject drugs in NYC: the importance of networks and syringe exchange programs for HIV prevention.” Harm Reduction Journal 14(1):40.

Walters, Suzan M, Alexis V Rivera, Kathleen H Reilly, Bridget J Anderson, Barbara Bolden, Afework Wogayehu, Alan Neaigus, and Sarah Braunstein. 2018. “Exchange Sex Among Persons Who Inject Drugs in the New York Metropolitan Area: The Importance of Local Context, Gender and Sexual Identity.” AIDS and Behavior:1-15.

Walters, Suzan M, Alexis V Rivera, Lila Starbuck, Kathleen H Reilly, Nyasha Boldon, Bridget J Anderson, and Sarah Braunstein. 2017b. “Differences in Awareness of Pre-exposure Prophylaxis and Post-exposure Prophylaxis Among Groups At-Risk for HIV in New York State: New York City and Long Island, NY, 2011–2013.” JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 75:S383-S91.