海角社区

Dr. Larissa Mooney is a board certified addiction psychiatrist with expertise in the treatment of substance use disorders and psychiatric comorbidity.  After obtaining residency training at New York University, she completed a fellowship in addiction psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  Dr. Mooney is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Addiction Medicine Clinic, where she teaches psychiatrists in training in the clinical management of dual diagnoses.  Dr. Mooney serves on the Executive Board of Directors for the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP).  She has conducted research on treatment interventions for addictive disorders, including methamphetamine, cocaine and opioid use disorder and has received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study clinical outcomes in individuals with cannabis use disorder.   

Cheryl Healton, DrPH, is dean of the College of Global Public Health and professor of public health policy and management at New York University.  A public health leader and scholar, Healton has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and special reports on topics including HIV/AIDS, the opioid crisis, public health education, health policy, substance abuse, and tobacco. 

Healton was the founding president and CEO of Legacy (now Truth Initiative), a national foundation dedicated to tobacco control created by the tobacco industry鈥檚 Master Settlement Agreement. Healton worked to further the foundation鈥檚 mission: to build a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. During her time with Legacy, Healton guided the national youth tobacco prevention counter-marketing campaign, truth庐, which has been credited with reducing youth smoking prevalence to near record lows. 

Healton is currently focused on what lessons can be learned from the tobacco industry鈥檚 Master Settlement Agreement and applied to other public health issues, including opioids, gun violence, obesity, and global warming. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMp1802633

Dr. Samuel Weiss is a professor in the Departments of Cell Biology & Anatomy and Physiology & Pharmacology at the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine. Dr. Weiss is the founder and was the inaugural Director of UCalgary鈥檚 Hotchkiss Brain Institute, whose mission is to translate innovative research and education into advances in neurological and mental health care.

Two major discoveries are the hallmarks of Dr. Weiss' research career. In 1985, together with Dr. Fritz Sladeczek, Dr. Weiss discovered the metabotropic glutamate receptor - now a major target for pharmaceutical research and development for neurological disease therapies. In 1992, Dr. Weiss discovered neural stem cells in the brains of adult mammals. This research has led to new approaches for brain cell replacement and repair, as well as to novel, experimental therapeutic strategies for brain cancer. As the Scientific Director of CIHR-INMHA, Dr. Weiss works with the Canadian neurosciences, mental health and addiction communities to identify research priorities, develop research funding opportunities, build partnerships and translate research evidence into policy and practice to improve the health of Canadians and people around the world. As a member of CIHR's leadership team, he participates in setting and implementing CIHR's strategic direction.

Elliot Berkman is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and Co-Director of the Center for Translational Neuroscience. He studies the motivational and cognitive factors that contribute to success and failure at health goals such as cigarette smoking cessation and dieting. His research leverages the distinct strengths of several research methods, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, longitudinal survey methods, and laboratory experiments.

This work adopts a translational neuroscience approach by using knowledge of brain function, structure, and connectivity to design and improve interventions on health behavior and wellbeing. Projects in the lab are currently funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He directs the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory in the Department of Psychology.

Katharine Sperandio, PhD, joined the Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) faculty as an Assistant Professor at Saint Joseph鈥檚 University in 2022. She is currently the CACREP-accreditation coordinator for the CMHC program. She completed her PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision at CACREP-accredited William & Mary in 2019. Her research is inspired by her work as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), which has granted her the opportunity to work with a variety of populations, including those living with addictions. She actively serves clients in the Philadelphia community so that she can continue to use her clinical experiences to inform her teaching and scholarship. The mission of her research agenda is to increase understanding on how to help those living with addiction promote and sustain their recovery and how to optimally support families who are impacted by addiction. She has also explored topic areas that pertain to supporting mental health and addictions counselors who are undergoing chronic stress. In addition to this work, she co-constructed the Multidimensional Cultural Humility Scale (MCHS) with her colleagues to assess levels of cultural humility among mental health and school counselors. She has worked with colleagues on multiple research projects to investigate how to support students in learning how to be more culturally responsive and trauma-informed in their clinical practice. As of 2022, she was invited to serve as an Associate Editor for The Professional Counselor, which she accepted with great elation.

The mental health impacts related to workplace violence, bullying, and harassment are essential to understand and address. Jason Walker, Psy.D., Ph.D., focuses his academic work and research on addressing these issues. In addition, Dr. Walker also serves rural and remote Indigenous communities, providing essential clinical mental health and social services. 
Dr. Walker specializes in addressing mental health and organizational psychology related to workplace violence, bullying, and sexual harassment. His research focuses on the context in which these events happen and the treatment for individuals who’ve been impacted. His research includes the prevalence and implications of these acts and the dismantling of these types of systems.
Dr. Walker completed his doctorate in clinical psychology (Psy.D.) from California Southern University and his doctorate in general psychology (Ph.D.) from North Central University. He received his Master of Social Work from the University of Toronto and his Bachelor of Arts in psychology from McMaster University. He also actively contributes as a reviewer for the Journal of Consulting Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, and Frontiers in Public Health.
 
Affiliated partners, organizations, or associations:

Canadian Professional in Human Resources, Member
Society for Human Resource Management, Senior Consulting Professional
Alternate Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada, Member
British Psychological Society, Member
American Psychological Society, Member (Teaching)
Canadian Counselling & Psychotherapy Assoc., Member
Canadian Addiction Counsellors Certification Federation, Member
American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, Diplomate

Montes' research involves investigating correlates and consequences of substance use (e.g., alcohol, marijuana, tobacco use) as well as behavioral addictions such as gambling. His research has also focused on investigating moderation as a viable treatment goal in substance use recovery. He is interested in exploring the viability of targeting individuals' treatment seeking self-efficacy as a mechanism to reduce the treatment gap and increase treatment seeking for a substance use disorder.
Montes is a consulting editor of the American Psychological Association (APA) journal and has published more than 30 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals. He has also received a Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award for $866,000 from the National Institutes of Health.

Thomas Stopka is an Epidemiologist and Professor with the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Through his research, Dr. Stopka explores the interconnectedness of substance use, social and behavioral risk factors, and overdose and infectious disease outcomes among high-risk and often hidden populations through community-engaged, interdisciplinary, multi-methods, applied epidemiological research studies. His major research interests focus on the overlap substance use, infectious disease (HCV, HIV, and STIs), and opioid overdose. He employs qualitative, biostatistical, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial epidemiological, and laboratory approaches in his studies to assess the risk landscape, access to health services, and implement and test public health and clinical interventions to address health disparities. Stopka is currently a multi-Principal Investigator (MPI) on three National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded studies that aim to: 1) Predict future opioid overdoses in Massachusetts employing Bayesian spatiotemporal models to inform pre-emptive public health responses; 2) determine the best timing for extended-release medications (XR-Buprenorphine) for opioid use disorder among incarcerated people in Massachusetts; and 3) assess the effectiveness of a mobile telemedicine-based hepatitis C treatment intervention among rural people who inject drugs. He is also a Co-Investigator on the National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded HEALing Communities Study to reduce opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts, in which he is leading GIS and spatial epidemiological analyses. These and other studies that Stopka is working on employ: 1) ethnographic and qualitative approaches to assess contextual factors tied to salient exposures and outcomes of interest and to generate hypotheses; 2) innovative epidemiological, legal, and policy scans to assess substance use-related morbidity and mortality and health services landscape; 3) spatiotemporal methods to explore the distribution of measures that affect risk, and to determine the geolocation of and access to current services, as well as gaps; and, 4) Bayesian spatiotemporal dynamic modeling approaches to inform small area forecasting of opioid-related mortality.