Chair of Epidemiology, Professor of Epidemiology

Overview

I am a Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, and the Founding Director of the People, Place & Health Collective (PPHC) at Brown University.

I received a PhD in epidemiology from the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. During my doctoral training, I worked at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. In 2011, I completed postdoctoral training at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Broadly, my work focuses on substance use epidemiology, harm reduction research, and the social, environmental, and structural determinants of health of drug-using populations. Our team conducts research that aims to improve the health and well-being of people who use drugs. The PPHC currently includes four faculty, three postdoctoral research associates, three graduate students, three undergraduate students, a research director, a senior biostatistician, a research programmer, three project managers, two research associates, and seven research assistants. We post insights and summaries of our work to our team's Medium page and our Twitter account.

I am the Principal Investigator of multiple NIH-funded projects, including the Rhode Island Prescription and Injection Drug Use Study (RAPIDS) and PROVIDENT, a randomized trial to prevent overdose deaths in Rhode Island. As the Scientific Director of PreventOverdoseRI, Rhode Island's drug overdose surveillance and information dashboard, I work closely with the Rhode Island Department of Health to track, measure, and evaluate efforts to address the state's opioid overdose epidemic. I also serve as an expert advisor to the Rhode Island Governor's Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force. I am the inaugural recipient of the National Institute on Drug Abuse "Avenir" award, which supports TITAN, a research program using agent-based modeling to investigate HIV transmission dynamics among people who use drugs. I serve as an Associate Editor (Public Health & Epidemiology) of the International Journal of Drug Policy. To date, I have authored or co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and two book chapters.

 

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

On the Web