People

Ijeoma Opara
Ijeoma Opara, PhD, MPH, LMSW
Yale School of Public Health - Associate Professor of Public Health
Email: ijeoma.opara@yale.edu
Education
PhD, Family Science and Human Development, Montclair State University
MSW, Social Work, New York University
MPH, Epidemiology, New York Medical College
BA, Psychology, New Jersey City University
Research Interests
HIV/AIDS prevention, Drug use, Adolescent girls of color, Child health disparities, Adolescent development, Intersectionality, African-American families
BIO
Ijeoma Opara is an Associate Professor of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Opara is also the director of The Substance Abuse and Sexual Health (SASH) lab (www.oparalab.org) and a faculty fellow in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale. Dr. Opara’s research focuses on HIV/AIDS, HCV, and substance use prevention among adolescents of color and highlighting racial-gender specific protective factors among Black adolescent girls. She primarily uses strengths-based approaches in her work to highlight resiliency, empowerment, and cultural strengths in ethnic minority families and their role in prevention.

Dr. Opara is a former NIDA T-32 pre-doctoral fellow in the Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research program at NYU Meyers College of Nursing from 2018-2019. This award supported her dissertation research, which examined protective factors for sexual risk behavior and drug use among Black and Hispanic girls living in Paterson, NJ.

Dr. Opara was named the 2020 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award recipient which funds her project on neighborhoods impact on substance use and mental health among urban youth in Paterson, NJ for the next five years. More information about Dr. Opara’s grant can be found at: https://commonfund.nih.gov/earlyindependence/awardrecipients
Projects
Principal Investigator, Integrating Community Based Participatory Research and Machine Learning Methods to Predict Youth Substance Use Disorders for Urban Cities in New Jersey. Active
Principal Investigator, Understanding the Role of Neighborhoods on Urban Youth’s Substance Use and Mental Health: A Community-Based Substance Abuse Prevention Project. Active
Publications

Recent

Opara I, Weerakoon SM, Srikanth N, Brooks Stephens J, Wan X, Willie TC (2025).
Examining pathways among teen dating violence, substance use, and suicidal ideation among Black girls: A cross-sectional study
Journal of Interpersonal Violence [Epub 2025 Jul 31]. doi: 10.1177/08862605251353484.

Weerakoon SM, Takenaka BP, Srikanth N, Warren JL, Opara I (2025).
Spatial associations of alcohol outlet density with neighborhood crime and child opportunity: A hierarchical Bayesian ecological study
Substance Use and Misuse, 60 (9), 1319-1327. doi: 10.1080/10826084.2025.2496932.

Weerakoon SM, Henson-Garcia M, Abraham A, Vidot DC, Messiah SE, Opara I (2025).
Adolescent polysubstance use and co-occurring weapon carrying, bullying victimization, and depressive symptomology: Patterns and differences in the United States
Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 56 (2), 456-467. doi: 10.1007/s10578-023-01573-2. PMCID: PMC11229529.

Weerakoon SM, Srikanth N, Hansoti E, Takenaka BP, Wan XY, Opara I, Markham C, Lau M (2025).
Teen dating violence among Asian American adolescents: Insights from a national survey (2015-2021)
Journal of Aggression Maltreatment and Trauma, 34 (3), 331-347. doi: 10.1080/10926771.2025.2471348.

Weerakoon SM, Srikanth N, Aivadyan C, Takenaka BP, Rose R, Rutledge JD, Wan X, Opara I (2025).
A nationally representative analysis of substance use and sexual health correlates associated with HIV and STI testing among adolescents
AIDS and Behavior, 29 (3), 919-932. doi: 10.1007/s10461-024-04575-w.

Ms. Opara's Google Scholar Profile
Selected Press