Research Team
Risa Weisberg is a clinical psychologist, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine at Brown University. Together with Dr. Livingston, Dr. Weisberg is a Principal Investigator on this project and she leads the qualitative research aims. Her research focuses on treatment for common behavioral health problems, including opioid use disorder, chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. She is especially interested in means to make high-quality behavioral health treatment more accessible, including digital therapeutics and primary care-behavioral health integration.
Dr. Nick Livingston is a Staff Psychologist and Investigator in the National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. His primary interests include substance use disorder treatment and promoting health equity among LGBTQ+ individuals and Veterans. Recent efforts include identifying and evaluating best-practices for addressing opioid and alcohol use disorder, including the use of technology-based interventions and digital therapeutics. Dr. Livingston is a principal investigator on this PCORI-funded study, leading quantitative and assisting with qualitative efforts to evaluate the impacts of COVID-19 and medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) policies on patient care and outcomes nationally.
Alexis is an equity driven public health researcher experienced in opioid use disorder research, data collection, analysis, and project management. She holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology (MPH) from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She also maintains active licensure to practice in Massachusetts as an EMT and Certified Pharmacy Technician. Her skills include qualitative and quantitative data analysis using various relational data bases including R, SAS, REDCap, and STATA. Specifically, Alexis is passionate about using her skills to analyze data that identifies health equity gaps in underserved communities.
Frank Meng is the National Co-Director of the VA’s Big Data Scientist Training Enhancement Program (BD-STEP), Associate Director of Data Science at the VA Boston Cooperative Studies Program Coordinating Center (Boston CSPCC), and Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine. His research focus is on developing Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods for structuring data from clinical free-text documents with an emphasis on building platforms for deploying NLP solutions for deployment within the existing framework and resource constraints of large healthcare systems. He received his BSc in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT and PhD in Computer Science from UCLA. For this PCORI study, Dr. Meng is leading the NLP efforts for extracting patient data elements (e.g., occurrence of relapse or substance use) from the VA’s document repository that are not being captured in structured form.
Dr. Henke is a Senior Director of Research at IBM Watson Health. Dr. Henke has been leading research studies, including many related to behavioral health care for federal government, states, and large employers for over 15 years. Recent efforts have included studies examining the impact of policy flexibilities during the COVID19 public health emergency on access and continuity of care for substance use disorders. Dr. Henke completed a postdoctoral fellowship in mental health at the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School as well as a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University. She received a BA in biology from Haverford College.
Norah Mulvaney-Day is a behavioral health services and policy researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. Her areas of research and policy interest include evaluation of treatments and policies to address opioid use disorder, integration of mental health and substance use disorder treatment into primary care, mental health parity, Medicaid policy, use of telehealth for behavioral health conditions and health equity. She leads the qualitative policy maker data collection and analysis components of this project.
Clara is a Research Assistant at BVARI and VA Boston. She is interested in treatment access and outcomes as well as evidence-based interventions for OUD and PTSD. After receiving her Bachelor’s from Boston College, she worked as a Research Assistant at UMass Boston in the Syndemics, Treatment, Evaluation and Prevention (STEP) Lab under the supervision of Dr. David Pantalone. While in the STEP Lab, she assisted with multiple projects exploring the impact of syndemic factors on mental and physical health outcomes. In addition to working on Project COPE she is currently working with Dr. Michelle Bovin on a study evaluating access pathways to PTSD treatment within the VA healthcare system. Through her involvement with Project COPE, she looks forward to developing a better understanding of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on OUD treatment and how this information can inform future standards of care.
Saketh is a Research Assistant who is interested in addressing the healthcare disparities faced by marginalized communities. He received his Master of Public Health (MPH) from Brown University in 2019 and his research focused on uninsured and correctional populations throughout his time as an MPH candidate. With Project COPE, he has been learning from patients, providers, and policymakers about the recent policy changes that made access to medication for Opioid Use Disorder more accessible. With his desire to improve access to healthcare, he is primarily interested in the effects of telehealth and other technological advances on quality of