Kenneth

A

Feder

,

PhD

Kenneth A. Feder, PhD, is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Mental Health. He studies public health approaches to preventing drug overdose deaths.

As an affiliate of the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative, Dr. Feder leads a number of studies investigating and evaluating state policies and programs intended to prevent overdose deaths. Projects include evaluating a Pennsylvania Medicaid incentive program to increase evidence-based post-overdose care in the emergency department; evaluating a Vermont law that removed criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder; an evaluation of a novel community-based co-response to drug overdoses in Newark, New Jersey; and an investigation of barriers to incorporating best practices in New Jersey’s state-licensed substance use treatment programs.

Dr. Feder is also a co-investigator on the ALIVE study: a 30-year cohort study of the health of adults from Baltimore city who have injected drugs. Projects include: several studies on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected health outcomes and service access for adults who inject drugs; a study on the non-prescribed use of methadone and buprenorphine; and a study characterizing polysubstance use and its sequelae.

From 2019-2021, Dr. Feder served as the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer (EIS) assigned to Maryland's Department of Health. In that capacity he played a significant role in Maryland's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including: investigating more than 300 outbreaks of COVID-19 in residential and community settings; coordinating Maryland's genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus; launching Maryland's surveillance system for multi-systemic inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C); and developing COVID-19 infection control guidelines for residential programs serving adults with developmental disabilities.