Behavioral Health Concentration

Robert Bohler, MPH, MA is a PhD candidate and NIAAA pre-doctoral trainee studying behavioral health policy. He recently served as a Rappaport Policy Fellow through the Harvard Kennedy School of Government at the Massachusetts State House, and as the lead researcher for a report and community forum held by the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum on the impact of opioids on rural and small communities in Western Massachusetts. Mr. Bohler is currently working on several research projects at Heller, including payment and policy tracking projects that are part of the HEALing Communities Study and the Brandeis Opioid Resource Connector, a website that highlights innovative community-based interventions to address the opioid crisis. Before coming to Brandeis, Mr. Bohler 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. He worked in collegiate recovery and community-based efforts to address substance use disorder (SUD), serving as a grant writer for a proposal to establish a recovery community organization in his community. He has published on the SUD continuum of care and recovery science and his research interests are in opioid policy, medications for opioid use disorder, recovery trajectories, financing and delivery of SUD treatment, and developing effective SUD treatment systems. Mr. Bohler is also a consultant for the Recovery Research Institute at MGH/Harvard Medical School and is actively involved in the Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery (MOAR).

 

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.

Deborah Strod is a PhD candidate 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, 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 is a PhD candidate in the Behavioral Health concentration. 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.”