Meet Our Team
Jeanne Marsh, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
University of Chicago
Dr. Marsh is an senior NIH investigator on several studies examining gender disparities in mental health and SUD treatment services. She will be a valuable asset in understanding how to improve service delivery within multicultural populations as well as understanding unique needs for women.
Dr. Marsh is the George Herbert Jones Distinguished Service Professor; Director, Center for Health Administration Studies; and Co-Director, Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy at the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration. Dr. Marsh is a distinguished professor with internationally recognized experience in researching services for women and families, the intersection of multiple service systems (substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, child welfare, criminal justice) and relation of service delivery to SUD treatment outcomes. Her experience as an NIH investigator on several studies examining mental health and treatment services will be a valuable asset in understanding how to improve service delivery within multicultural populations as well as understanding unique needs for women. She will collaborate in the development of gender-sensitive measures for existing data sets to assess client and provider barriers limiting women’s ability to access and remain in treatment. Dr. Marsh will contribute to the analysis of the data and guide the interpretation of results. She will work closely with the entire Investigative Team in order to ensure that the project is completed with a high level of scientific rigor.
Erick Guerrero, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
I-LEAD Institute
Dr. Guerrero is nationally recognized for his work on disparities in access to drug treatment and implementation of evidence-based practices. He collected the four waves of the data proposed for this project using several of his NIDA funded studies. Dr. Guerrero will manage and help execute all project activities.
Dr. Guerrero is the Director of Research at the I-LEAD Institute, Research to End Healthcare Disparities Corp. Dr. Guerrero received his Ph.D. in Social Service Administration from University of Chicago in 2009. Between 2009 and 2016, he has served as the PI of ten studies funded by Los Angeles County, Department of Public Health, Hamovitch Center for Research in Human Services at USC, Zumberge Grants from USC and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Currently, he is co-leading with Dr. Polk an U01 (DE027452-01) study on implementation of an evidence-based dentistry curriculum in oral health, and an R21 (AA026689-01) study with Dr. Subica on prevention of drug use among Pacific Islanders. Dr. Guerrero collected the four waves of the data proposed for this project using one of his NIDA funded studies. During the past 10 years, Dr. Guerrero developed a strong working relationship with over 140 treatment programs included in his studies. Dr. Guerrero has a track record of successfully leading complex research projects. Since 2009, Dr. Guerrero has published more than 60 peer reviewed publications, has served on national review groups, is on the editorial board for several peer-review journals in healthcare services and implementation, and has received several investigator awards and research fellowships by NIDA, AHRQ and other federal institutions for outstanding research.
Hortensia Amaro, Ph.D.
Co-Investigator
Florida International University
Dr. Amaro is internationally recognized for her work on treatment effectiveness for women with histories of substance use and trauma. She will bring expertise on community-based interventions to improve treatment process (wait time and retention) to help women achieve recovery from opioid abuse. Dr. Amaro has also extensive national experience in training SUD treatment providers in efficacious treatment approaches for diverse populations.
Dr. Hortensia Amaro is a Distinguished University Professor and Senior Scholar on Community Health at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work at Florida International University. For over 37 years, she developed and implemented publicly funded SUD treatment programs (including MAT) and conducted federally-funded research (over 30 multi-year grants) on quality improvement and outcomes of SUD treatment programs in in collaboration with the Boston public health department. She has published over 160 scientific papers on SUD and related problems among women. Amaro will rely on her leadership and over 35 years of experience in the field of substance abuse treatment implementation and research on women with trauma to effectively lead all aspects of the proposed project. Her work in this area has been recognized by over 50 awards from community, state and federal agencies- most notably election to the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Amaro is familiar with SUD treatment programs in LA County, as her recent R01 intervention efficacy study from NIH was based in one of the largest SUD programs for women in LA County. The proposed study will address an important area in understanding the specific challenges pregnant women diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD) – primarily heroin – face in treatment access and engagement within publicly funded treatment for OUD.
Keith E. Brown, MBA
Principal Administrative Director
University of Chicago
Keith E. Brown, M.B.A. is the Administrative Director for the Center for Health Administration Studies (CHAS) and the Medicaid Working Group (MWG) at the University of Chicago.
He received his B.S. in Biology from Indiana University and his M.B.A. from Saint Xavier University. For this project, he will be coordinating all aspects of the project to ensure timelines are met during the period of performance. Additionally, he will provide advisement to the project PIs and research staff on federal funding compliance. Mr. Brown has almost 20 years of knowledge and experience in higher education operations and research management, including project management, pre-award management, budgets/accounting management, and HR management. He has facilitated revenue and funding growth, patient care and improved health outcomes in fields ranging from substance abuse disorders to emergency medicine to endocrine disorders.
Yinfei Kong, Ph.D.
Co-Investigator Director
I-LEAD Institute
Dr. Yinfei Kong is an experienced biostatistician in health services research. He has conducted the analysis of the proposed data in more than 10 publications in top health services journals.
Dr. Yinfei Kong will serve as Co-Investigator and the expert statisticians on this project. He will ensure the quality and accuracy of the multilevel and multiyear dataset. He will work closely with Drs. Amaro, Marsh and Guerrero to accomplish the analytical objectives of Aim 1. Dr. Kong has been the leading statistician in three of the NIDA funded studies for Dr. Guerrero (R21, R33 and R01). He will leverage his strong understanding of the dataset he helped create to establish rigorous analytical approaches that reduce estimate bias. He will also co-lead the implementation of findings translation and dissemination models. Dr. Kong will dedicate 20 days a year in each of the two project years.
Tenie Khachikian, Ph.D.
Research Associate
University of Chicago
Tenie Khachikian received her PhD in Psychology at the University of California, Merced, in 2018. She has an M.S.W. in Social Work from the University of Southern California and her B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
She has a background and experience in examining sociocultural factors particularly focused on health disparities and culturally responsive interventions. She has worked on several federally funded research studies that focus on improving health outcomes for racial and ethnic minority populations. During her doctoral program, she focused on exploring parent motivations to discuss unhealthy eating and marijuana use with their children, by developing and implementing health communications to motivate parent and child discussions on health-risk behaviors, in an effort to lessen these behaviors.
Veronica Serret, MSW
Research Coordinator
Florida International University
Veronica Serret is a social worker with 12 years of experience managing projects in behavioral health services. She is also a member of the Integrated Substance Abuse Treatment to Eliminate Disparities (iSATed) research team at the I-LEAD Institute.
In her capacity as research coordinator, she has managed the collection of the four waves of the proposed data, including recruitment, engagement, data cleaning and reporting and publishing of findings. Ms. Serret has established a strong collaborative experience with over 100 treatment programs in the L.A. County region. As such, her contribution to this project is critical.
Abdullah Alibrahim, Ph.D.
Consultant
Abdullah Alibrahim, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at the College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University. His research bridges disciplinary and technical gaps between innovative engineering methods and pressing healthcare challenges by expanding Industrial and Systems Engineering approaches to improve healthcare system design and performance.
Dr. Alibrahim serves as a research consultant as part of The Disparities in Substance Use Disorder Treatment Programs Research Team at the University of Chicago and consults for the Office of the Undersecretary of Planning at the Ministry of Health – Kuwait. He is Research Fellow at the GeoHealth Lab in Dasman Diabetes Institute – Kuwait and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre in the London School of Economics – UK (2019). Alibrahim holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California – USA (USC, 2017). He also holds a Masters degree in Operations Research from USC (2015), Masters and Bachelors degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison – USA (2011 and 2010, respectively). He was part of the Health Systems Engineering Lab at Viterbi School of Engineering at USC, which focuses on applications of engineering methods and systems approach in the health care domain.
His research centers arounds expanding Systems Engineering approaches to healthcare. This involves a host of tools and methods to study a system, its elements, and connections. He specializes in advanced data analytics, machine learning, and computational simulation models to assist with the design of healthcare policies and processes. He leverages these tools to coordinate and improve operations across care systems or communities as well as ensure reliable, efficient, and safe care.
Dr. Alibrahim has peer-reviewed publications on models informing health policy related to the costs, competition, quality of care, and patient choice of providers. He presented in numerous international conferences in engineering, health management, and health policy. Currently, Dr. Alibrahim leads projects that include assessing the burden of diabetes on Kuwait’s Hospital system using machine learning to rectify incomplete hospital records, mapping cancer patient journeys in team-based cancer care settings, and geographically-enabled analyses of opioid use disorder treatment data.
Lesley Harris, MSW, PhD
Consultant
Dr. Lesley Harris is an Associate Professor at the Kent School of Social Work & Family Sciences at the University of Louisville.
Dr. Harris’s research goals are to improve and extend intervention strategies for older adults who have been impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Her expertise is qualitative methodology (Ethnography, Grounded Theory, and Arts-Based Approaches), but she also uses quantitative methods in her research.
Over the past fifteen years, Dr. Harris has worked closely with international NGOs such as Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, World Relief, and the International Medical Corps to support psychosocial interventions and research. Her international work includes studies on grandparents raising grandchildren due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam.
Domestically, her research interests involve the improvement of service delivery for persons over the age of 50 living with HIV/AIDS. She is currently studying the state of HIV/AIDS care and prevention for older adults among aging service providers (long-term care facilities, assisted living facilities, and independent living communities) to understand the most effective strategies to meet the needs of this growing population.
Mona Zahir, BA
Research Assistant at I-LEAD
Mona Zahir is a research assistant at the I-LEAD institute. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and a minor in computer science. She is interested in pursuing a research career in sociology, for which she will begin a PhD in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles in Fall 2022.