HEAL Preventing OUD Research Program Annual Meeting

Day 1:

Carlos Blanco, M.D., Ph.D., M.S. is the Director of the Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Blanco is a national known expert in the epidemiology and treatment of addictive disorders with and without comorbid disorders. His accomplishments include, among others, a detailed examination of the course and stages of substance use disorders, the development of methods to quantify the generalizability of clinical trials, the development and testing of interventions that combine motivational interviewing with cognitive-behavioral therapy to improve retention and outcome in individuals with addictive disorders, and the creation of a virtual map of psychiatric disorders, based on empirical data, to guide research into the causes of mental disorders. Prior to joining NIDA, Dr. Blanco was Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and a Research Psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is a graduate of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and completed his psychiatry residency at Columbia University, where he also completed a research fellowship. Dr. Blanco has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications.

Margaret Kuklinski, Ph.D., is a prevention scientist and health economist whose work focuses on promoting healthy behaviors and positive developmental outcomes in young people through evidence-based preventive intervention. As a health economist, she has helped set methodological standards for cost, benefit-cost, and cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions for children, youth, and families. Dr. Kuklinski has also led health economic studies of several community-based and family-focused preventive interventions, including Communities That Care, the Family Check-Up, and Promoting First Relationships. She currently co-chairs the Health Economics Working Group for a set of projects funded under NIDA’s HEAL Prevention Initiative aimed at preventing opioid misuse in adolescents and young adults. Dr. Kuklinski earned her Ph.D. in Clinical and Community Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University.

Jacquelyn Christensen, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Quality, Research, & Evaluation at the School-Based Health Alliance, bringing over 20 years of experience supporting non-profit, community organizations using a healing-centered, equity-focused lens. Her evaluative priorities at SBHA aim to promote collaborative and integrated care across education, primary care, mental health, and child welfare, while using data and research to reduce barriers and increase access to health care for children and families. She previously served as an independent evaluator with various organizations, such as Health Leads Inc. and Volunteers of America – Head Start, as well as directed evaluation, quality assurance, and trauma-informed training efforts at nonprofit organizations, including NRF Global Communities and Los Angeles Child Guidance Clinic (Wellnest). As a public speaker, Dr. Christensen has also reached over 5000 human services providers in California via professional development workshops and has taught various undergraduate and graduate courses for over 13 years. Her outside research efforts focus on stress and resilience, regulation, and using technology to explore brain-body integration in understanding behavior. Dr. Christensen received her degree in Applied Developmental Psychology from Claremont Graduate University. She currently resides in upstate NY.

Diana Bowser, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University.  She is a health economist and health systems analyst who uses a variety of economic analyses and econometric techniques to examine the impact of program and policy changes on health outcomes and program effectiveness. Currently, she is one of the health economists on the NIDA funded HEAL Initiative, collaborating on a number of cost effectiveness analyses examining prevention efforts to reduce opioid initiation among at risk populations. Most recently, she has been one of the lead health economists conducting the implementation costing and cost effectiveness analysis as part of the NIDA funded Juvenile Justice Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System. She has worked with larger claims databases examining health care utilization and outcomes for various populations including patterns in emergency department use and breast cancer care. She has conducted a number of health economic and econometric analyses, including a decomposition analysis examining the income contribution to changes in life expectancy over time across counties in the United States. Bowser also holds an appointment as Adjunct Associate Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she is the Course Director for a number of Global Executive Training Programs.

Kathryn E. McCollister, Ph.D., is a Professor and Director of the Division of Health Services Research and Policy in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is also Director of the Methodology Core for the NIDA-funded “Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV” (CHERISH). Dr. McCollister’s primary research focuses on economic evaluation of treatment interventions for individuals with substance use disorders. Dr. McCollister is one of the lead economists working on several NIH Helping End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiatives, including the HEALing Communities Study, the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN), and the Opioid Use Disorder Prevention initiative. Her studies include economic evaluations of prison-based treatment; adult and juvenile drug courts; continuing care and recovery management strategies for chronic substance users; and medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorders.

Stephen Magura, Ph.D., was the principal investigator of a NIDA-sponsored study, Community Utilization of Evidence-Based Program Registers (EBPRs) for Behavioral Health (2018 – 2022). The primary objectives were to determine to what extent EBPRs as innovative organizations actually increase the implementation of evidence-based programs and practices in the real world of behavioral healthcare. The methods included: study the visitors to evidence-based program register websites; study the mandates for implementing evidence-based programs issued by federal and state funding agencies in behavioral healthcare; and study key stakeholders of the registers (i.e., program/policy developers in state and private sector provider agencies).

Karl Hill, Ph.D., directs the Prevention Science Program and is a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder, and is co-director of the prevention registry, Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. Over the last thirty years he has focused on two key questions:  What are optimal family, peer, school, and community environments that encourage healthy youth and adult development? and, How do we work with communities to make this happen?  In addition, he has focused on developing and testing interventions to shape these outcomes, and on working with communities to improve youth development and to break intergenerational cycles of problem behavior including addiction and crime.

Beth Stormshak, Ph.D., is a Knight Chair and Professor in the College of Education at the University of Oregon.  She studies family-centered prevention and intervention with underserved populations in community settings.  Her work focuses on prevention of mental health problems and behavioral risk with children and families using evidence-based interventions that focus on improving family relationships and child behavior.

Craig PoVey, M.S.W., recently retired after 32 years of working for the State of Utah. For the past 19 years, he worked as the Program Administrator for the Substance Use Prevention System. Craig as served on many prevention research advisory boards including the University of Washington’s Community Youth Development Survey, and Northwest University’s Center for Prevention Implementation and Methodologies. Prior to his prevention career, Craig worked 10 years in clinical services at a community mental health center. He currently works for JBS International.

Day 2:

Kelly Kelleher, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health and ADS/Chlapaty Endowed Chair for Innovation in Pediatric Practice in the Colleges of Medicine and Public Health at The Ohio State University.  He is also Vice President of Community Health and a lead Principal Investigator for the Center for Child Health Equity and Outcomes Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He is a pediatrician and health services researcher focused on improving and measuring the quality of pediatric care for high-risk children affected by social determinants of health, violence, neglect, alcohol, drug use or mental disorders.  He has been continuously funded by NIH since shortly after completing his training in 1990. He is involved in strategy development for the Nationwide Children’s Healthy Neighborhood, Healthy Family zone focusing on neighborhood leaders, community agencies and related partnerships to improve housing, employment, schools, and safety on the Near South Side of Columbus.

Wilson Compton, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. Before joining NIDA in 2002 as Director of NIDA’s Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research, Dr. Compton was tenured faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Master in Psychiatric Epidemiology Program at Washington University in Saint Louis as well as Medical Director of Addiction Services at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital.  Dr. Compton received his undergraduate education from Amherst College. He attended medical school and completed residency training in psychiatry at Washington University in Saint Louis. Over his career, Dr. Compton has achieved multiple scientific accomplishments. He has authored over 250 publications and has been an invited speaker at multiple high-impact venues. He was a member of DSM-5’s Revision Task Force and Vice Chair for the DSM-5-Text Revision. He has led, for NIDA, development of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study (PATH), a longitudinal population study, jointly sponsored by NIDA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with 45,971 baseline participants who provide survey responses and biological assessments to inform U.S. tobacco regulations.

Chris Jones, Ph.D., currently serves as the acting director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. When not serving as the acting director, Dr. Jones is the deputy director of NCIPC. In this role, he is the primary scientific advisor to the NCIOPC direction and other senior staff on science issues in public health, clinical care implementation, epidemiology, biostatistics, economics, and behavioral science. In addition, he provides scientific leadership and drive NCIPC’s strategic direction by overseeing the refinement of the scientific research agenda and the coordination on the NCIPC strategic priorities of drug overdose, suicide prevention, and adverse childhood experiences.  As deputy director, he also oversees and enhances collaboration among NCIPC’s Office of Science, Office of Informatics, Office of Strategy and Innovation, and Overdose Response Coordinating Unit.  Prior to becoming deputy director, Dr. Jones served as associate director of the NCIPC Office of Strategy and Innovation.