Cherie Blair MD, PhD is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where she specializes in Infectious Diseases. She went to medical school at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completed her residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at UCLA. During her fellowship training, she participated in the UCLA STAR program where she obtained a PhD in Health Policy and Management from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her interests include sexually transmitted infections, HIV prevention, substance use, and public health. Currently, her research is primarily focused on the impacts of substance use and sexually transmitted infections on systemic and mucosal inflammation. She is a clinical provider at the UCLA CARE Center, where she focuses on the prevention and treatment of HIV and other STIs.

Contact email: CherieBlair@mednet.ucla.edu 

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

1. Blair, C. S., & Shoptaw, S. J. (2024). Managing Stimulant Use Among People With HIV: Harm-Reduction Strategies From Behavior to Medication. Topics in antiviral medicine, 32(5), 571–578.

2. Harris, C. L., Blair, C. S., Segura, E. R., Gutiérrez, J., Lake, J. E., Cabello, R., & Clark, J. L. (2024). Sexual network characteristics, condomless anal intercourse, and the HIV care cascade among MSM living with controlled versus uncontrolled HIV infection in Lima, Peru: a population-based cross-sectional analysis. Lancet regional health. Americas, 32, 100722.

3. Freese, J., Segura, E. R., Gutierrez, J., Lake, J. E., Cabello, R., Clark, J. L., & Blair, C. (2024). Sexual network characteristics and partnership types among men who have sex with men diagnosed with syphilis, gonorrhoea and/or chlamydia in Lima, Peru. Sexually transmitted infections, 100(2), 84–90.

Last updated: 1/15/2025

Chelsea L. Shover, PhD is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor-in-Residence at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research. She completed her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles and a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Her research focuses on substance use, infectious disease, and their shared social and structural risk factors. Her 2019 study on the changed association between cannabis laws and opioid overdose mortality was named among that year’s top 10 Proceeding of the National Academy of Science papers contributing to public understanding of science. She co-authored a report published in The Lancet: “Responding to the opioid crisis in North America and beyond: recommendations of the Stanford–Lancet Commission.” Alongside her academic work, she has served as an epidemiologist in government and non-profit positions, most recently as Supervising Epidemiologist for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 response in homeless shelters and encampments. Supported by a Career Development Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, her lab’s current projects include methods to use rapidly available overdose data to inform public health policy, as well as community-based implementation of harm reduction strategies. Using medical examiner data, her team has identified key local drug supply changes (i.e., fentanyl’s westward spread; xylazine’s increasing presence in various markets) and then worked with policymakers and community organizations to improve on-the-ground overdose prevention.

CV: Chelsea Shover CV - May 2022

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

1. Rosen, A. D., Senturia, A., Howerton, I., Kantrim, E. U., Evans, V., Malluche, T., Miller, J., Gonzalez, M., Robie, B., Shover, C. L., Chang, A. H., Behforouz, H., Nguyen, A., & Thomas, E. H. (2023). A COVID-19 Vaccination Program to Promote Uptake and Equity for People Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County. American journal of public health, 113(2), 170–174. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307147

2. Edwards, G. G., Miyashita-Ochoa, A., Castillo, E. G., Goodman-Meza, D., Kalofonos, I., Landovitz, R. J., Leibowitz, A. A., Pulsipher, C., El Sayed, E., Shoptaw, S., Shover, C. L., Tabajonda, M., Yang, Y. S., & Harawa, N. T. (2023). Long-Acting Injectable Therapy for People with HIV: Looking Ahead with Lessons from Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. AIDS and behavior, 27(1), 10–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-022-03817-z

3. Friedman, J., Godvin, M., Molina, C., Romero, R., Borquez, A., Avra, T., Goodman-Meza, D., Strathdee, S., Bourgois, P., & Shover, C. L. (2023). Fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine-based counterfeit pills sold at tourist-oriented pharmacies in Mexico: An ethnographic and drug checking study. Drug and alcohol dependence, 249, 110819. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.110819

Dr. Amanda Miller has been conducting HIV and substance use research since 2010. She received her doctorate from University of California, San Diego (UCSD), her masters from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and she is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Miller’s research primarily focuses on the synergy between alcohol use, experiences of intimate partner violence and HIV. Her dissertation research examined how alcohol use and intimate partner violence impact HIV care and treatment outcomes in Uganda. Her postdoctoral research is focused on addressing perinatal alcohol use among pregnant and breastfeeding women who are at high risk of HIV infection of living with HIV in South Africa. She is also co-investigator on a study to assess the feasibility of integrating point of care syphilis testing into routine antenatal care in Uganda and has ongoing mental health research at the same study site aimed at characterizing drivers of poor mental health and substance use and identifying gaps in mental health literacy in this setting to inform adaptation of interventions to address these issues.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

Sabrina L. Smiley, PhD, MPH, MCHES is Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Division of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science at San Diego State University School of Public Health. She is currently a combination prevention core scientist at CHIPTS, an inaugural CHIPTS Bridge Fellow (2021-2022), and a past scholar in the UCLA HIV/AIDS, Substance Abuse and Trauma Training Program (HA-STTP). Her NIDA-funded, HA-STTP pilot study examined momentary changes in substance use, sexual risk behavior, and HIV risk perception over time among young adult sexual minority Black men in Washington, D.C. Smiley’s primary research interests are all within the area of health disparities and health equity. Currently, Smiley is leading NIH-funded projects and California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program-funded projects in addiction risk, public policy, and community engagement. She completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the NCI/FDA-funded Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science in the Department of Preventive Medicine at KSOM of USC before faculty appointment. Smiley received her Ph.D. in sociology from Howard University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She completed her M.P.H. in health behavior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. Her research findings have been published in journals such as Current HIV/AIDS Reports, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, and Tobacco Control.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

1. Mei, K. A., Shin, H., & Smiley, S. L. (2024). Commercial Tobacco Retailers Need to Be Included in Research on Policies Restricting the Sale of Menthol Cigarettes. Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, 26(Supplement_2), S143–S146. https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntad252

2. Taggart, T., Smiley, S. L., & Ritchwood, T. D. (2023). Advancing Public Health and Social Equity Through Research, Training, and Action. American journal of public health, 113(S2), S98–S101. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307340

3. Smiley, S. L., & Brown, N. (2023). Assessing access to smoking cessation services in Southern California HIV safety nets: A secret shopper study. Drug and alcohol dependence reports, 7, 100169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dadr.2023.100169

Alex (Oleksandr) Dubov, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Health and Bioethics at Loma Linda University. He earned his PhD in Bioethics from Duquesne University, where his thesis investigated the use of Behavioral Economics to facilitate crucial choices at the end of life. He has worked at Emory University Hospital as a Palliative Care Counselor and at Florida Hospital as a Certified Healthcare Ethics Consultant. Dr. Dubov completed his postdoctoral training at Yale School of Public Health Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS as a REIDS fellow (Research Education Institute for Diverse Scholars). At Yale, he was awarded a grant to design a public health HIV prevention program based on preferences of Ukrainian LGBT. This research was also supported by the USAID fund and presented to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. His research interests are in leveraging new and emerging technologies as innovative approaches for supporting the implementation of combination (biomedical, behavioral, and health system) interventions to prevent HIV infection among groups that are epidemiologically at high-risk for infection and whose prevention needs are complicated by their socially marginalized statuses in their communities.

Contact: adubov@llu.edu

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

1. Dubov, A., Basenko, A., Dymaretskyi, O., & Shoptaw, S. (2024). Impact of the Russian invasion on opioid agonist therapy programs in Ukraine: A qualitative study. Drug and alcohol dependence, 255, 111069. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.111069

2. Dubov, A., Altice, F. L., Gutierrez, J. I., Wickersham, J. A., Azwa, I., Kamarulzaman, A., Gautam, K., & Shrestha, R. (2023). Pre-exposure prophylaxis service among men who have sex with men in Malaysia: findings from a discrete choice experiment. Scientific reports, 13(1), 14200. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41264-5

3. Dubov, A., Krakower, D. S., Rockwood, N., Montgomery, S., & Shoptaw, S. (2023). Provider Implicit Bias in Prescribing HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) to People Who Inject Drugs. Journal of general internal medicine, 38(13), 2928–2935. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-023-08040-7

Wei-Ti Chen, RN, CNM, PhD, FAAN, is Professor and Lulu Wolf Hassenplug Chair at UCLA School of Nursing. As a nurse scientist and certified nurse-midwife, her research portfolio is directed toward the development and dissemination of tools to improve HIV care and maternity health. The participants in her U.S.-based studies include predominantly underrepresented minority groups with a particular emphasis on quality of life and stigma reduction in people living with HIV and other chronic diseases (e.g., Tourette Syndrome), and in other minorized groups (e.g., immigrants, migrants, sexual minorities). A major focus of her research has been on culturally adapting self- and family-management interventions to enhance quality of life of people living with HIV who identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. Dr. Chen has published more than 130 empirical papers on stigma reduction and HIV care. She is a principal investigator of several NIH-funded grants which include: a project to understand how Buddhism impacts stigma reduction in people living with HIV in Thailand; a study to understand self- and family-management in HV-infected Asian and Pacific Americans; and research on how self-management impacts Chinese women living with HIV in Shanghai and Beijing. In the past, Dr. Chen has worked as a Co-I to design and test an intervention for parents who are infected with HIV to disclose their serostatus to their child(ren). Her research efforts are devoted to understanding how to enhance adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART), to decrease disease-related stigmas, and to manage mental stressors to improve quality of life of underserved populations around the world. In recognition of her contributions, Dr. Chen was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in July 2023. She was also honored with the Equity-Minded Nurse Leadership Award in September 2024, presented by the American Organization of Nursing Leadership, AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Contact: wchen@sonnet.ucla.edu

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

1. Bond, K. T., Chen, W. T., Crespo-Fierro, M., Randolph, S., & Ramos, S. R. (2024). Ending the HIV Epidemic: Disrupting Inequities Through HIV Research Centered on Women and Girls. The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care : JANAC, 35(3), 173–174.

2. Huang, J., Lin, Y., Fu, Y., Xu, Z., Hong, H., Arbing, R., Chen, W. T., Wang, A., & Huang, F. (2024). A longitudinal network analysis of interaction factors among Chinese women at high risk for perinatal depression. Midwifery, 139, 104187.

3. Chen, W. T., Huang, F., Shiu, C. S., Lin, S. H., Tun, M. S., Nwe, T. W., Oo, Y. T. N., & Oo, H. N. (2024). Can social support mediate stigma and perceived stress in people live with human immunodeficiency virus?. AIDS care, 36(2), 255–262.

Last updated: 1/15/2025

Debra A. Murphy, PhD, is a Professor Emerita on Faculty Recall with the Health Risk Reduction Projects within the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Program (ISAP). She graduated from Florida State University in 1987 with a PhD in Psychology. She has conducted HIV/AIDS behavioral research on children, adolescents, adults, and families over the past 26 years.  Overall, her work has been behavioral research in HIV/AIDS with children, adolescents, adults, and families.  Her primary areas of research are: (1) protective and risk factors among children and adolescents affected by maternal HIV/AIDS; (2) mental health among at-risk and HIV-positive adolescents; and (3) assessment of children and adolescents.  She conducted an NIMH-funded R01 to assess the impact of maternal HIV/AIDS on their children (in what became a 15-year longitudinal study, as she followed the families since the children were 5 – 11 until they were late adolescents/early adults, over 3 NIH-funded R01s).  Findings from that longitudinal observational study indicated a large number of mothers and children experience psychological distress and that these families need supportive intervention.  Overall, she has been the P.I. on nineteen federally funded or state funded grants, as well as a Co-Investigator on twenty-three federally funded projects.  She is an author on over 160 peer-reviewed papers.  Prior to coming to UCLA, she was the Associate Director for the Center for AIDS Intervention in Wisconsin, and Co-Investigator on a series of federal grants focused on outcome evaluations of HIV behavioral risk-reduction interventions.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS: