Maxwell team wins grant from Department of Justice for opioid study
A group comprised of four researchers — representing
the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and the Maxwell X Lab — will
receive approximately $500,000 over three years in support of their research on
different opioid court treatment interventions across New York State. The
funding is part of a $1.35 million grant to the Research Foundation for Mental
Hygiene, Inc. from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice
Assistance.
Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health
Promotion and associate professor of sociology, leads the team. She is joined
by Alexandra Punch, associate director of the Lerner Center; Joe Boskovski,
managing director of the X Lab; and Len Lopoo, Maxwell Advisory Board Professor
of Public Policy, director of Maxwell’s Center for Policy Research, and
director of the X Lab.
The project, which is funded for three years,
addresses the recent sharp increase in opioid use disorders and overdoses across
New York state, as well as many other regions across the United States. Researchers
will study how treatment and recovery services for individuals with opioid use
disorders can be improved and expanded through opioid courts. They will work
with opioid courts in select locations across New York to evaluate different
treatment models for individuals who have been arrested for an opioid-related
crime. Included for study are cognitive behavioral treatments, interactive
journaling, and moral reconation therapy. The team will also provide assessment
of the implementation of these treatments across participating courts.
Shannon Monnat is co-director of the Policy,
Place, and Population Health Lab in Maxwell’s Aging Studies Institute. Her
research examines geographic differences in a variety of health outcomes, with
her most recent work focused on why rates of substance misuse and drug overdose
are higher in some places than others. Her academic work has been published in
a wide range of journals, including the American
Journal of Public Health, the Journal
of Rural Studies, Rural Sociology,
and the International Journal of Drug
Policy.
Alexandra Punch has expertise in innovative
treatment practices, derived from her time as the director of drug user health
at ACR Health. She is currently chair of the Harm Reduction Subcommittee for
the Onondaga County Drug Task Force and serves on the board for
Road2RecoveryCNY, a nonprofit seeking to address heroin addiction across
Central New York.
Joe Boskovski has worked in a range of
government, academic, and consulting roles designing and implementing field
experiments in order to improve the lives of people across the United States.
He has been a partner with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities
initiative, a project manager with the University of Pennsylvania, and an
analyst at New York State Parks.
Len Lopoo’s interdisciplinary research
primarily examines child and family policy, and his results have been published
in a wide range of academic journals, including Demography, Social Science
Research, Social Service Review,
and the Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public
Administration.