Robert Bohler
Robert Bohler, MPH, is a PhD student and NIAAA pre-doctoral trainee studying behavioral health policy. He received an MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology from the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern University and received an AB in Economics from the University of Georgia. Before coming to Brandeis, Mr. Bohler worked in collegiate recovery and community-based efforts for substance use disorder (SUD). Most recently, Mr. Bohler served as a grant writer for a proposal that was awarded $230,000 annually for a recovery community organization in his community. He has published on the SUD continuum of care and his research interests are in recovery science, opioid prescribing, and developing effective SUD treatment systems.
Emily Crandall
Emily Ledingham Crandall, MPH, is a PhD student and NIAAA pre-doctoral trainee studying behavioral health policy. She received a Master of Public Health from Westminster College and a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from the University of Utah. Prior to her doctoral studies, Emily worked for nearly four years at the State of Utah Department of Human Services Division of Services for People with Disabilities as a policy research consultant. In this position, she secured two grants ($453,594 and $218,500) to fund new programs to address sexual violence against people with disabilities in Utah and worked on several policy projects related to the Home and Community-Based Services Final Settings Rule, a major civil rights policy for people with disabilities receiving Medicaid funded services. She also taught as an adjunct professor at Westminster College in the public health program for three years, teaching program planning and evaluation, social and behavioral health, and epidemiology. Her research interests include improving social service systems, civil rights of people with disabilities, substance use and abuse among people with disabilities, and healthcare access.
Kathleen Dennehy
Kathleen Dennehy, MPP, has worked for thirty-two years in the Massachusetts correctional system, mostly recently as a prison warden and as the Commonwealth's first female Commissioner of the Department of Corrections. She holds a BA in Government, an MPA and an MA in Social Policy. Currently, as a part-time employee of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, she works with the US Department of Justice as a subject matter expert.
Alex Duarte
Alex graduated from Bentley University in 2019 and received a dual bachelors degree in public policy and business studies. During his time at Bentley, Alex’s research focused on policy indicators found within the substance abuse policy domain. More specifically, Alex has focused on how opioid overdose rates and lobbying efforts made by the pharmaceutical industry work to affect policymakers attention to the current opioid crisis. During his time at Bentley, Alex worked at the Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington DC and Project Weber, a Rhode Island-based harm reduction center for male and transgender sex workers.
Brandy Henry
Brandy Henry, LICSW, MSW, is a PhD candidate studying behavioral health policy. She received a Master of Social Welfare (MSW) with a concentration in Individuals, Families & Groups and specializing in Mental Health from UCLA. She received her BA from Boston University with a major in Psychology and minors in Statistics and Biology. She is also a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with experience providing direct clinical services to persons with severe mental illness involved with the criminal justice system. Her research interests are focused on exploring policy to improve treatment outcomes for this population. Current research includes work with the the National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded Brandeis Health Plan Survey and Juvenile Justice Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ-TRIALS) studies. She has published in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare and in conjunction with the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. She is a current National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Pre-Doctoral Fellow, and a past recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School Rappaport Institute Doctoral Public Policy Fellowship.
Corrine Holliday-Stocking
Corrine Holliday-Stocking received an MS in Sociology from Portland State University and a BS in Sociology from Gonzaga University. She currently teaches at Worcester State University in the sociology department. She teaches courses on medical sociology, research methods, and gender and sexuality. Her research interests include mental health in higher education, the LGBTQ+ population, and equity and inclusion.
Alexandra Kritikos
Alexandra F. Kritikos, MA, is a PhD Student studying health and behavioral health policy at the Heller School at Brandeis University. She is a National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Her current research includes work on cannabis regulatory policy, commercialization, and youth prevention. Before coming to Heller, she worked as an economist in the fields of micro-and-macroeconomics. Ms. Kritikos is a graduate research assistant in the Institute for Behavioral Health and has been on several research projects. Her work has been presented at annual conferences, and she serves as a co-author on various reports. Beyond her research interests, Ms. Kritikos is very passionate about teaching and mentoring, and teaches various economics and health policy courses. She received her MA in Applied Economics from Northeastern University, and her BS in Economics from the University of Patras, Greece.
Ye Zhang Pogue
Ye Zhang Pogue, MA, received an MA in Economics (2012) from Duke University and a BA in Economics from Shanghai Jiaotong University (2010). She is a doctoral candidate who, before coming to Heller was a research staff member at Duke University School of Nursing studying caregiving for Chinese elders with dementia. Her current research interests focus on treatment financing and delivery for young adults with severe mental disorders, both in the U.S. and China. Beyond her course work, she also engages in advocating for civil law reform in China for people with severe mental disorders.
Morgan Shields
Morgan Shields is a PhD student and NIAAA fellow studying quality of behavioral healthcare. She received an MSc in public health, with a concentration in social and behavioral sciences, from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and her BA in psychology from Kent State University. She currently leads a couple of research teams focused on the consumer experience within inpatient psychiatric facilities. Her research has been published in outlets such as the Journal of Health Psychology, Harvard Public Health Review, Journal of Patient Safety, Psychiatric Services, Health Affairs blog, and the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
Deborah Strod
Deborah Strod is a PhD student and NIAAA pre-doctoral trainee concentrating in Behavioral Health. She received an MSW from Boston University and an AB from Harvard University. She focuses on addictions workforce development for specialist and non-specialist positions, examining how responses to existing worker shortages are being reshaped by healthcare integration, cross-system coordination, changes in demand, and advances in scientific understanding of addiction. She is exploring worker and job flow within local treatment ecosystems, and is particularly interested in working with data from existing administrative sources. Important considerations include: compensation, recruitment/retention, education/training, culturally-responsive care, quality improvement and expansion of peer supports.
Heidi Bruggink Sulman
Heidi Bruggink Sulman, MPH, MSW, LCSW is a PhD student studying behavioral health policy. She received an MPH in Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights from the Boston University School of Public Health; an MSW in Clinical Social Work and Behavioral Medicine from the Boston University School of Social Work; and an AB in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality from Harvard University. Ms. Sulman most recently served as a Program Manager at the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission. She is a National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Pre-Doctoral Fellow and a past recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School Rappaport Institute Public Policy Fellowship. Her research interests include the financing and organization of behavioral health services, with particular focus on care integration, health insurance design, and provision of evidence-based practices.
Adam Vose-O'Neal
For the last several years, licensed clinical social worker Adam Vose-O’Neal has worked in a clinical practice in Providence, R.I. where he specializes in treating clients with addictions. Now, Vose-O’Neal is enrolled in the Heller PhD program with a concentration in behavioral health, and is a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Fellow. He continues to treat clients in Providence, and hopes to maintain a clinical practice while pursuing a research career. For his dissertation research, he plans to pursue deeper questions of addiction, sobriety and social networks informed by his experience as a clinician.
“Something that’s come up in my practice is seeing how people get sober. One interesting thing is that they don’t always do it through conventional treatment. I’ve seen clients that disconnect or connect with people in their lives—change jobs, move, start a new relationship, get out of a relationship—and it’s had an impact on their path not just to sobriety, but sustained sobriety. That’s interesting to me. Not just how people get sober, but stay sober.”