Dr. David G. Zelaya (he/him/él) is an Assistant Professor at Brown University School of Public Health (SPH) within the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies (CAAS) and the Center for Health Promotion and Health Equity (CHPHE) in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences. He is also a visiting professor at the University of California - San Francisco and he has held prior academic appointments at Harvard Medical School within the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital and at Yale University with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA).
Dr. Zelaya's program of research focuses on examining health disparities within minority communities and links to HIV risk, mental health, resilience, and alcohol use. Dr. Zelaya is the PI of a NIH-NIAAA funded K23 grant aimed to develop a behavioral health intervention for marginalized communities to decrease hazardous alcohol use. Clinically, he is interested in providing culturally competent behavioral health services to historically underserved communities.
Dr. Zelaya received his Ph.D. from Georgia State University in counseling psychology, he was a psychology resident at Harvard Medical School's Cambridge Hospital, and he completed his fellowship within the Alcohol Research Center on HIV (ARCH) and CAAS at Brown SPH.
Dr. Zelaya is actively involved in service at the national and local level. He has been the recipient of numerous teaching and social justice awards, his research has been published in the flagship journals of his field, he is an APA Minority Fellow alumnus, and he serves on the editorial board for multiple flagship journals in the field. At Brown, Dr. Zelaya teaches Introduction to Health Disparities.
