I am a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University's School of Global Public Health. I will be joining the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Maryland, College Park as an Assistant Professor in Summer 2025. 

As a political scientist and health policy scholar, I use mixed methods to investigate how and why the local political economy shapes outcomes of policies aimed at reducing disparities in the mental health, substance use treatment, and criminal legal systems. That is, my research explores how political and economic structures outside the healthcare system interact to allocate resources in ways that influence whether these policies fulfill their objective of reducing health inequities. For example, do the capacities of agencies interfacing with persons with psychiatric disorders—such as behavioral health agencies and law enforcement departments—affect how local governments provide behavioral health crisis care? Will the extent of privatization of substance use disorder treatment services partly explain variation in how local governments spend opioid settlement funds and their effects? 

I focus on the behavioral health and criminal legal systems because they interact with some of the most disadvantaged populations: persons with complex medical and social needs who disproportionately experience deep poverty and interface with public services. I focus on the political economy of public health because, despite minimal attention from public health scholars, my research shows that it is essential for explaining inequities in public health services and outcomes. Substantively, this has led me to study a range of topics, including community behavioral health care, alternatives to police-led crisis response, the opioid settlements, and cannabis social equity programs.

This website centralizes my work. For more information on my background, please see my CV. You can reach me via e-mail.