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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

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

Weerakoon SM, Srikanth N, Aivadyan C, Takenaka BP, Rose R, Rutledge JD, Wan X, Opara I (2024).
A nationally representative analysis of substance use and sexual health correlates associated with HIV and STI testing among adolescents
AIDS and Behavior [Epub 2024 Dec 11]. doi: 10.1007/s10461-024-04575-w.

Faust JS, Renton B, Bongiovanni T, ...Opara I..., Krumholz HM (2024).
Racial and ethnic disparities in age-specific all-cause mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic
JAMA Network Open, 7 (10), e2438918. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.38918. PMCID: PMC11581672.

Asabor EN, Aneni K, Weerakoon S, Opara I (2024).
Applying a community-engaged participatory machine learning model
American Journal of Community Psychology [Epub 2024 Sep 15]. doi: 10.1002/ajcp.12765.

Opara I, Pierre K, Gabriel C, Cross K, Clark CML, Rutledge JD (2024).
Faith leaders’ perspectives on involvement in HIV prevention for urban Black youth in New Jersey, USA
Religions, 15 (7), 862. doi: 10.3390/rel15070862.

Opara I, Brooks-Stephens JR, Aneni K, Asabor EN, Weerakoon SM, Duran-Becerra B (2024).
A qualitative exploration on risk and protective factors of substance use among Black adolescent girls
Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology [Epub 2024 May 15]. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2024.2344171.