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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

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.

Opara I, Pierre K, Cayo S, Aneni K, Mwai C, Hogue A, Becker S (2024).
Brief parent-child substance use education intervention for Black families in urban cities in New Jersey: Protocol for a formative study design
JMIR Research Protocols, 13, e55470. doi: 10.2196/55470. PMCID: PMC11117129.

Lardier DT, Opara I, Asabor EN, Bell F, Garcia-Reid P, Reid RJ (2024).
HIV knowledge and protective factors among racial-ethnic minority youth: Moderation by ethnic identity and LGBQ+ identity
Journal of LGBT Youth, Journal of LGBT Youth (21), 3. doi: 10.1080/19361653.2023.2200425.

Douglas RD, Alli JO, Gaylord-Harden N, Opara I, Gilreath T (2024).
Examining the integrated model of the interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide and intersectionality theory among Black male adolescents
Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior [Epub 2024 Feb 27]. doi: 10.1111/sltb.13066.

Ma Y, Zang E, Opara I, Lu Y, Krumholz HM, Chen K (2023).
Racial/ethnic disparities in PM(2.5)-attributable cardiovascular mortality burden in the United States
Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 2074-2083. doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01694-7.