CMAP Team

Dr. Sean T. Allen, DrPH, MPH is an endowed Bloomberg Assistant Professor of American Health in Addiction and Overdose at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Health, Behavior and Society (HBS) and International Health (IH) and is affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health (formerly known as the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health), Center for AIDS Research, and the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. He has conducted many studies pertaining to the public health of people who inject drugs (PWID) across diverse contexts. Over his career, Dr. Allen has used qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial methods to examine injection drug use-associated health disparities.

Andrew Anderson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. His work aims to increase the visibility of healthcare needs among historically marginalized populations. Before Hopkins, Andrew was an assistant professor at Tulane University, a research scientist and Phyllis Torda health care quality fellow at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and a director of quality measurement at the National Quality Forum (NQF). He is also a former health policy research scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a RWJF Health Equity Scholar for Action, and a Health Affairs Health Equity Trainee.

Sachini Bandara, PhD, MS serves as the Director of Training for the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy. Dr. Bandara is a health policy and health services researcher and is an assistant professor of Mental Health (primary) and Health Policy and Management (joint) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She conducts health policy research related to mental health and substance use, with a focus on state policy responses to the U.S. overdose crisis, populations involved in the criminal legal system and pregnant and parenting people. She is a mixed methods researcher who uses qualitative, survey and implementation science methods to understand policy implementation and lived experience and uses quasi-experimental methods with administrative data to understand policy effects.

Lauren Byrne, MPH, is a Research Associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her work focuses on primary data collection methods to understand state-based overdose prevention policies and programs through the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, her research explores aspects of treatment, harm reduction, and lived experiences of people who use drugs. Ms. Byrne has extensive operational experience in data analytics and graduate medical education that informs her work and understanding of health systems and practice. She earned her Masters in Public Health in research and statistics from Case Western Reserve University and her BA in mathematics from Grinnell College. She is currently pursuing her DrPH in Healthcare Management and Leadership in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her dissertation is focused on state regulatory policy related to music therapy licensure and practice.

Dr. Cepeda is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on characterizing the intersecting epidemics of substance use, infectious diseases (primarily HIV and HCV), and justice involvement.  He applies both quantitative and qualitative research methods to understand how structural drivers, such as interactions with law enforcement, drive overdose and HIV risk.  Additionally, he uses economic evaluation and modeling to evaluate the value-for-money of interventions implemented to improve health outcomes among people who inject drugs. He has worked on numerous community-based cohorts involving people who inject drugs in North America and in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  He has served on three Lancet Commissions, most recently on the Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights where he evaluated the impact and cost-effectiveness of a police education program on reducing HIV and fatal overdose among people who inject drugs in Tijuana, Mexico.  Currently, he is interested in developing novel interventions to increase access and retention in medications for opioid use disorder to address the overdose crisis in the United States.  

Michael Darden is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School. At Carey, Dr. Darden serves as the Academic Program Director for the Master of Science in Health Care Management. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co-Editor of the Journal of Human Resources. Dr. Darden is a Core Faculty member of the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative, and he serves as an executive board member of the FDA-funded Tobacco Online Policy Seminar Series. A trained health economist, Dr. Darden conducts empirical research in the economics of risky behaviors, including tobacco and alcohol. He also has expertise in the economics of medical innovation. Dr. Darden teaches courses in health economics, economics for decision making, and econometrics. 

Gail L. Daumit, M.D., M.H.S., is the vice dean for clinical investigation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is Samsung Professor of Medicine with joint appointments in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology, Health Policy and Management and Mental Health in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research has focused on developing innovative ways to improve the physical health of people with mental illness through descriptive epidemiology, health services research, clinical trials and implementation science. She has obtained continuous NIH funding for this work since 2000. Dr. Daumit earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania, her medical degree at Emory University and her Master of Health Science in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins. She completed her residency in internal medicine primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital, and came to Johns Hopkins as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and general internal medicine fellow, then joining the faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine. She has received the David Levine Mentoring Award from the Department of Medicine, and the National Alliance of Mental Illness Scientific Research Award.

Matthew Eisenberg, PhD serves as Center Director for the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy. Dr. Eisenberg is a health economics, an associate professor and associate chair of Health Policy and Management (primary), associate professor of Mental Health (joint) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and associate professor (joint) at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His research is focused on analyzing the impact of governmental, insurer, and employer level health care policies with applications to mental health and substance use disorder. He currently serves as co-chair of a Lancet Psychiatry commission on scaling mental health interventions and was appointed by Governor Wes Moore to serve on the Maryland Commission on Behavioral Health Care Treatment and Access. 

Catherine K. Ettman, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. With a background in politics and policy, her work explores the social and economic forces that shape population mental health and policies that can reduce mental health disparities. She is the co-editor of Urban Health (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Migration and Health (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Dr. Ettman received her PhD in Health Services Research at Brown University School of Public Health and studied public policy at Princeton University.

Dr. Fingerhood is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, and Chief of the Division of Addiction Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from The Johns Hopkins University and his Medical Degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed internal medicine training and a chief resident year at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The mission of his career has been to promote and improve the provision of medical care to patients with substance use disorder, including the treatment of HIV and hepatitis C, with the development, maintenance and evaluation of innovative programs related to the care of these individuals. Dr. Fingerhood created the Comprehensive Care Practice in 1994, a Ryan White funded primary care practice largely devoted to providing care to individuals with substance use disorder. The practice has been innovative in integrating buprenorphine treatment into the primary care setting for over 700 individuals. He has also co-created novel buprenorphine treatment programs at a community center, at a church and in a mobile van outside the Baltimore detention center. He has received the Health Equity Leadership award from the Baltimore City Health Department and is co-author of the ASAM Handbook of Addiction Medicine. Dr. Fingerhood currently chairs the ASAM State of the Art Conference and the ASAM Medical Education Council. He has co-authored over 70 research papers and has received NIH research funding continuously over the past 30 years.

Rebecca Fix, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a licensed clinical psychologist. Her research work focuses primarily on promoting ethnoracial and gender equity in the juvenile legal system and on secondary and tertiary prevention of physical and sexual violence among young people. To achieve this aim, Dr. Fix works in close collaboration with young people and their families as well as with community organizations, police agencies, and prisons. Her work has been funded by national organizations including the NIH and NIJ.

Dr. Peter Fredericks MD MPH is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He earned his M.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed an emergency medicine residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Fredericks then pursued a two-year Research Fellowship and a Masters in Public Health at The Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an active emergency medicine clinician, acting as an attending physician in the Emergency Departments of both The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

Dr. Fredericks research aims to investigate healthcare disparities in the treatment of opioid use disorder through the lens of spatial analytics. He has particular interest in how access to, or availability of treatment for opioid use disorder relate to overdose within the United States.

Dr. Danielle German (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Society. Her research draws from interdisciplinary perspectives and uses qualitative and quantitative methods to understand and address the social and structural context of health behavior and disease transmission, with particular emphasis on applied research related to drug use, HIV transmission, and mental health among marginalized populations. She has a long history of behavioral research, harm reduction program experience, and collaboration with community organizations and health departments. She currently leads several research studies to identify gaps in services and inform interventions related to HIV and substance use.

Samantha J. Harris, PhD, MPA is an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Harris is a health services and health policy researcher applying mixed-methods to understand the delivery of mental health services. Her research focuses on the accessibility and quality of substance use treatment and harm reduction services and the local, state, and federal policies that shape service access. She specializes in examining coverage for mental health and substance use treatment within the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Her primary appointment is with the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative—a $120 million investment in overdose reduction across seven states supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies— where she works with an interdisciplinary team to conduct rapid-cycle evaluations of innovative state programs and policies. Harris has served as a co-Investigator and analyst on several NIH, SAMHSA, and privately funded projects, and has held prior fellowship placements in national and state policy organizations.

Dr. John W. Jackson is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Mental Health. His research primarily focuses on developing methodological tools for translational health equity research. This includes methods to identify high leverage targets and strategies for interventions that address health disparities, as well as methods to evaluate effects of interventions and policies, and to translate interventions to new populations and contexts, with current applications in healthcare and clinical prognosis. Dr. Jackson’s work has been funded by a K01 award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute as well as pilot funding from Johns Hopkins University. He is a member of the editorial board of Epidemiology as well as Sociological Methods & Research.

Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, PhD, serves as Director of Research for the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy. Dr. Kennedy-Hendricks is a policy and health services researcher and Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management (primary) and Mental Health (joint) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on understanding the implementation of health and social policies and the impact of these policies on the health and well-being of populations with mental health and substance use-related conditions. She is particularly interested in the policy and public health complexities that arise when populations interact with multiple systems, including housing support, the foster care system, and the criminal legal system.

Dr. Sabriya Linton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Linton’s research focuses on investigating the social epidemiology of behavioral health, with specific focus on elucidating the impacts of social context, community development and housing policies on behavioral health outcomes. She applies multiple methodologies including multilevel, geospatial, and qualitative approaches to her research.

Mark K. Meiselbach, PhD is a member of the leadership team for the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy. Dr. Meiselbach is a health economist and Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research focuses on policy and market determinants of access in privately managed insurance markets, with a focus on access to mental and behavioral health treatment. His work has been published top economics, medical, and policy journals including the Journal of Health Economics, Health Affairs, and JAMA – Internal Medicine and covered by leading media outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and USA Today. He currently serves as co-Chair of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange Standing Advisory Committee, where he advises the exchange on policies and practices to make health coverage more affordable and accessible in Maryland. 

Dr. Paul Nestadt is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Public Health, where he is Co-Director of the multi-school Suicide Prevention Workgroup. As Clinical Director of the McGlasson Anxiety Disorders Clinic and Associate Director of the Esketamine Treatment Clinics at Johns Hopkins Hospital, his clinical work centers treatment resistant cases. As an inpatient psychiatrist attending on the JHH Motivated Behaviors Unit, he treats patients who suffer from comorbid substance dependence and other serious mental illness who require acute management.

Dr. Nestadt is a nationally renowned expert on the practical risk factors for suicide, such as firearm and opioid access. He is a leader in education regarding suicidality, anxiety disorders, and psychiatric evaluation at Johns Hopkins and teaches the doctoral level course, “Suicide as a Public Health Problem” and codirects the Public Health Track for psychiatry residents. His methodological expertise includes large scale regression-based data analysis, post-mortem clinical evaluation, and characterization of suicidal intent in cases of overdose. He has written dozens of chapters for leading psychiatric and medical textbooks, over 60 peer-reviewed papers, and has spoken nationally and internationally on the topics of suicide risk and the role of firearms, opiates, and the limitations of screening.

Dr. Nestadt is the chair of Maryland’s Suicide Fatality Review Committee, serves on the Baltimore City Council’s Suicide Prevention Legislative workgroup, consults for Baltimore’s Overdose Fatality Review Committee, and conducts interviews with the next-of-kin following suicide and overdose deaths as part of a research partnership with the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Rheanna Platt, MD, PhD, MPH is a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She serves as a consultant for Maryland’s Child Psychiatry Access Program (MD-BHIPP) which supports the efforts of pediatric primary care and emergency medicine professionals to assess and manage the mental health needs of their patients. Her research focuses on (1) Implementation of screening, preventive and treatment interventions in primary care, community mental health, and community (e.g., school) settings; (2) Mental health care disparities; and (3) Models (e.g., integrated care) and methods to improve access to mental health care for youth and families.

Dr. Pollack is the Katey Ayers Endowed Professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Departments of Health Policy and Management and Epidemiology), School of Nursing, and School of Medicine (Department of Medicine). He serves as Associate Chair for Research and Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Clinically, he practices as a primary care physician in the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center. His work focuses on social determinants of health with an emphasis on housing policy, including issues related to housing affordability, neighborhood context, and housing mobility.

Daniel Polsky is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and Policy at Johns Hopkins University. He holds primary appointments in both the Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Carey Business School.  He holds secondary appointments in the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing.  He is the Director of the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative, uniting more than 120 scholars across Johns Hopkins University exploring the role of business and incentives in advancing health and an affordable and equitable, high-value health system.  He also is Co-Director of the Hopkins Economics of Alzhiemer’s Disease and Services Center (HEADS).  Dr. Polsky, a national leader in the field of health policy and economics, has dedicated his career to exploring how health care is organized, managed, financed, and delivered, especially for low-income populations.  He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was the senior economist on health issues at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and has served on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers. He received a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Michigan in 1989 and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996.

Brendan Saloner, PhD serves as the Director of Practice for the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy. Dr. Saloner is a Bloomberg Professor of Addiction and Overdose in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and is also jointly appointed in the Department of Mental Health and Core Faculty in the Berman Institute of Bioethics. Dr. Saloner is primarily focused on policies to improve access and quality of services for people who use drugs, with a special interest on the criminal legal system and Medicaid policy. Dr. Saloner co-leads the evaluation team of the Bloomberg Overdose Initiative, a multiyear campaign to reduce overdose focused on seven states. He also is extensively involved in efforts to improve access to opioid use disorder treatment in jails and prisons. 

Dr. Susan Sherman is a Bloomberg American Professor of Health in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with joint appointments in the Departments of Population Family and Reproductive Health, Mental Health, Epidemiology, and Health, Policy, and Management. For over two decades, her research has largely focused on examining the environmental structural drivers of and developing interventions to address health disparities among people who use drugs and women who sell sex in both domestic and global settings. She founded a low barrier drop-in center for women in southwest Baltimore, the SPARC Center, which provides medical, legal, harm reduction, and social services in a fixed site and mobile van. Her research has informed a number of policies, including the decriminalization of drug checking in Maryland and elsewhere, and she is currently evaluating a mobile drug checking and wound care intervention. She has served on several local, state, and national committees overseeing harm reduction programs.

Eric Slade is an applied health economist. His research addresses health care access and organization and financing issues in health care systems using administrative health care and survey data. Eric’s current research focuses on Medicare Advantage Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans and coordination of home and community-based care among persons with dual Medicare-Medicaid eligibility. Eric has more than 75 published articles and has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the U.S. Department of Education, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and other federal agencies and foundations.

Minna Song is a Research Associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management. She completed her BA in Women’s and Gender Studies at Georgetown University and received her MPH in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Emory University. Her work focuses on access and quality of care for people with substance use disorders and healthcare for people in the criminal legal system. She works primarily with Dr. Brendan Saloner on projects including: evaluating policies impacting access to treatment for substance use disorders; identifying risk factors for overdose; exploring bioethical dilemmas in carceral settings; assessing the impact of housing policies on substance use disorder; and eliciting first-hand accounts of drug use, overdose, and incarceration. Prior to Hopkins, she worked at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University researching cognition among older breast cancer patients and racial disparities in cancer screening and outcomes.

Dr. Stoller is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Broadway Center for Addiction. His area of expertise is treatment of substance use problems and, in particular, the use of methadone and buprenorphine. His research interests have centered on cost issues as they relate to drug abuse and treatment, methods to enhance treatment adherence and retention, and co-occurring psychiatric, medical, pain, and substance use disorders (SUDs). Published manuscripts and book chapters focus on the use of adaptive stepped care, treatment incentives, and integrated treatment of co-occurring disorders in a single setting. At Johns Hopkins Health Plans he is Medical Director, Behavioral Health, and has a related focus on fostering policies and initiatives applied in MCOs to improve health outcomes and value, such as improving detection of SUD and coordinating treatment of physical, mental health, and SUDs. Accelerated by his service on the board of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, and its Maryland state chapter, he refocused his work on increasing access to, and quality of, medication-assisted therapies in Baltimore, the region, and nationally. This work has received increasing attention, especially as it relates to coordinated care using opioid treatment programs as hubs of expertise that coordinate with community physicians prescribing buprenorphine. Dr. Stoller created and implemented the first known buprenorphine hub and spoke collaborative care model in the nation, and this is the subject of numerous presentations, webinars, and white papers.

Elizabeth Stuart, PhD is a senior advisor to the Center and past co-Director and Co-Founder. She is currently the Hurley-Dorrier Professor and Chair in the Department of Biostatistics (with joint appointments in Mental Health and Health Policy and Management) and co-Principal Investigator of our National Institute of Mental Health T32 pre-doctoral training program. Dr. Stuart uses and develops statistical methods to help learn about the effects of public health programs and policies, often with a focus on mental health and substance use. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, and has won numerous other awards and honors. 

Carolyn Sufrin, MD, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and an obstetrician-gynecologist specializing in complex family planning at Johns Hopkins University, where she is associate professor in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics and director of the research group Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People (ARRWIP); she also holds an appointment in Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and is affiliated faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. She has worked extensively on reproductive health issues affecting incarcerated women, from providing clinical care in jail, to research, policy, and advocacy. Her work is situated at the intersection of reproductive justice, health care, and mass incarceration, which she examines in her book, Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars.  She has conducted extensive research on treatment for incarcerated pregnant and postpartum individuals with opioid use disorder. Dr. Sufrin continues to do research and national advocacy dedicated to improving reproductive health care for incarcerated women and to contributing to broader conversations of criminal legal system reform.

Dr. Johannes Thrul is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research interests focus on the intersection between technology, substance use, and mental health. He is using technology to improve our understanding of substance use and mental health and to develop mobile health (mHealth) interventions that help people change health risk behaviors.

Dr. Thrul has conducted studies using smartphone-based real-time data collection methods such as Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and has collaborated on trials examining the efficacy of behavioral smoking cessation interventions delivered on Facebook, smartphones, virtual reality, as well as text-messages leveraging peer-mentors. Dr. Thrul is trained in user experience (UX) design research and has expertise in conducting qualitative research, including interviews, focus groups, and mixed methods approaches to inform mHealth intervention development to bring about health behavior change. Dr. Thrul has ongoing studies focusing on mHealth based smoking cessation, medical cannabis use, as well as digital media use and health.

Sara Whaley, MSW, MPH, MA is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and is the Program Director of the JHSPH Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative. With expertise spanning social work practice, research, and policy, Sara now coordinates technical assistance and evaluation aimed at addressing the nation’s overdose crisis and is actively engaged in state policy activities leading efforts to guide effective spending of funds from opioid settlements. Sara is committed to bridging research and government to share knowledge, create strong partnerships, and inform effective policy. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a member of the Baltimore City Women's Commission.

Christina Yuan, PhD, MPH is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Principal Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, and Associate Director of the NIMH P50 Johns Hopkins ALACRITY Center for Health and Longevity in Mental Illness. She is a health care management researcher who studies the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices, health information technology, and other innovations that are designed to improve care delivery. She has extensive experience using qualitative, quantitative, and social network methods to form a comprehensive understanding of how to “put things into practice,” with a particular focus on engaging with community partners (policy-makers, clinicians and staff, and patients) to inform and improve the implementation and scale-up of innovations.