People

Suzan Walters
Suzan M. Walters, PhD
NYU Langone Health - Assistant Professor
Email: Suzan.Walters@nyulangone.org
Education
PhD, Sociology, Stony Brook University
MA, Sociology, St. John’s University
BA, Philosphy, University of California, Riverside
Research Interests
Medical sociology, social determinants of health, substance use, intersectional stigma, gender, sexualities, HIV/AIDS, social networks
BIO
Suzan Walters is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and an affiliated researcher at the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research at New York University (NYU).  She has completed two postdoctoral fellowships focused on interdisciplinary drug use research: the Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research program at NYU and the Interdisciplinary Research and Training Institute on Hispanic Drug Use at the University of Southern California. Her mixed-methods research focuses on the social and structural determinants of health among drug using populations.  In particular she focuses on awareness, knowledge and access to biomedical interventions as part of larger social processes of exclusion. Her current K01 grant focuses on how intersectional stigma experiences affect health outcomes among people who use drugs. She has worked as an ethnographer for the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System, a program director for the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, and a research fellow for AIDS Foundation Chicago. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, American Sociological Association, Sociologists for Women and Society, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Sociology AIDS Network, and Stony Brook University.
Projects
Principal Investigator, Intersectional Stigma Experiences, Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and Other Service Use Among People Who Inject Drugs. Active
Principal Investigator, Community-Driven Exploration of PrEP, Harm Reduction, and OPC Service Use among Spanish-Speaking People Who Inject Drugs in NYC. Completed
Principal Investigator, Feasibility of PrEP for Persons Who Inject Drugs. Completed
Principal Investigator, Qualitative Assessment of the First Government Sanctioned Overdose Prevention Center in the United States. Completed
Publications

Recent

Chong N, Azwa I, Hassan AA, Mousavi M, Wong PL, Ng RX, Saifi R, Basri S, Omar SFS, Walters SM, Collier ZK, Haddad MS, Altice FL, Kamarulzaman A, Earnshaw VA (2025).
Strengthening HIV activism among clinicians in Malaysia: A randomised controlled trial
AIDS and Behavior [Epub 2025 Jul 21]. doi: 10.1007/s10461-025-04829-1.

Vu TT, Bluthenthal RN, Huh J, Corsi KF, Simpson K, Ganesh SS, Walters SM (2025).
Psychiatric medication treatment, concurrent substance use, and subsistence difficulty among people who inject drugs with diagnosed mental health disorders in Los Angeles and Denver
Substance Use and Misuse, 60 (10), 1556-1564. doi: 10.1080/10826084.2025.2506135.

Jaiswal J, Grin B, Gagnon K, John T, Walters S, Kay E (2025).
Staff and providers’ perceptions of patients’ PrEP candidacy, acceptability, and adherence in methadone clinic settings
Substance Use & Addiction Journal, 46 (3), 510-517. doi: 10.1177/29767342241288981. PMCID: PMC12170915.

Mixson LS, Zule W, Ruderman SA, Feinberg J..., Walters SM, ...Delaney J (2025).
Prevalence and correlates of multiple injections per injection episode among people who inject drugs in rural U.S. communities
International Journal of Drug Policy, 143, 104837. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2025.104837. PMCID: PMC12239670.

Frank D, Bennett AS, Elliott L, Scheidell JD, Walters SM, Cleland CM (2025).
An examination of how people who use drugs conceptualize the benefits and drawbacks of using overdose prevention centers
Contemporary Drug Problems [Epub 2025 Jun 2]. doi: 10.1177/00914509251346135.

Dr. Walters' Google Scholar Profile
Selected Press