I am an Associate Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and serve as Associate Director of Research of the MGH Recovery Research Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and statistician at the MGH Clinical Trials Network & Institute. I am an experimental psychologist with research interests in mHealth technologies, smoking cessation, and engagement in auxiliary addiction services (e.g., mutual help, recovery community centers), where I frequently use mixed methods approaches to inform treatment development and engagement with existing resources.
The overall goal of my program of research is to improve access to care for persons seeking to overcome problematic substance use. My emphasis is on resources that can be leveraged at no cost to the target population. Key priorities for me are that these approaches are implementable and build on people’s strengths. To this end: (1) I am conducting research on mobile health technologies, which have the potential to reach a much wider group of people than traditional approaches can; (2) I conduct healthcare research on patient engagement with addiction services outside of the traditional clinic setting (e.g., mutual help, recovery community centers). Both of these types of resources provide free support within the communities in which people live. I strongly believe that these novel care paradigms can help address social inequality highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic.