People

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Camila Gelpí-Acosta, PhD
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY - Social Sciences Department - Assistant Professor
Email: camilagelpi@gmail.com
Education
PhD, Sociology, New School for Social Research
BA, Political Science, University of Puerto Rico
Research Interests
Migration, Drug use risks, Sexual risks, HIV, Hepatitis C, Drug policies, Puerto Rico
BIO
Camila Gelpí-Acosta received her PhD from the New School for Social Research in 2013. Since 2008, she has been engaged in drug use and HIV research in New York City and in Puerto Rico. As the Project Director for the CDC’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) study in NYC from 2008 to 2011, she conducted multiple ethnographies with people at high risk for HIV, including migrant Puerto Rican people who inject drugs. From 2013-2014, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Behavioral Scientist Training program (NIDA T32 DA007233), where she received comprehensive support and mentorship for research proposal development. She is a native Puerto Rican who co-founded a syringe exchange program in Puerto Rico (El Punto en la Montaña, Inc.), and is a consultant of a NIDA R01 study (PI Dombrowski, R01DA037117) in rural Puerto Rico. In September 2014, she was appointed as Assistant Professor at LaGuardia College in the Criminal Justice Program.
Projects
Principal Investigator, Ending HIV and Taming HCV and Overdose Among Puerto Rican PWID in New York City: The Ganchero Intervention. Active
Principal Investigator, Migrant Puerto Rican PWID: The Influence of Acculturation and Enculturation on HIV and HCV Risk Behaviors. Completed
Publications

Recent

Gonzalez KA, Swartz N, Linares MA, Gelpí-Acosta C, Chatterjee A (2024).
Latine perspectives on the impact of family, perceptions of medication, health systems, incarceration, and housing on accessing opioid agonist therapy: A thematic analysis
Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment, 167, 209491. doi: 10.1016/j.josat.2024.209491.

Oyola-Santiago T, Gelpi-Acosta C, Aponte-Melendez Y, Cano M (2024).
Narcanazo: Community activation of antiracist epidemiology
American Journal of Public Health, 114 (S6), S463-S466. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2024.307605. PMCID: PMC11292290.

Abadie R, Cano M, Habecker P, Gelpi-Acosta C (2022).
Substance use, injection risk behaviors, and fentanyl-related overdose risk among a sample of PWID post-Hurricane Maria
Harm Reduction Journal, 19 (1), 129. doi: 10.1186/s12954-022-00715-4. PMCID: PMC9694860.

Gelpi-Acosta C, Cano M, Hagan H (2022).
Racial and ethnic data justice: The urgency of surveillance data disaggregation
Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, 4, 100082. doi: 10.1016/j.dadr.2022.100082. PMCID: PMC9881686.

Cano M, Gelpi-Acosta C (2022).
Risk of drug overdose mortality for island-born and US-born Puerto Ricans, 2013-2019
Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 9 (4), 1403-1414. doi: 10.1007/s40615-021-01077-6.


Notable

Deren S, Gelpi-Acosta C, Albizu-Garcia CE, Gonzalez A, Des Jarlais DC, Santiago-Negron S (2014).
Addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic among Puerto Rican people who inject drugs: The need for a multiregion approach
American Journal of Public Health, 104 (11), 2030-2036. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302114. PMCID: PMC4192034.

Gelpi-Acosta, C. (2014).
Challenging biopower: “Liquid cuffs” and the “junkie” habitus
Drugs, 22 (3), 248-254. doi: 10.3109/09687637. PMCID: PMC4780363.

Dr. Gelpí-Acosta's MyBibliography Profile
Selected Press