OUR TEAM
ALEX WALLEY, MD, MSc (he/him)
Principal Investigator
Alexander Y. Walley, M.D., M.Sc., is Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and a general internist and addiction medicine specialist at Boston Medical Center. He has served the medical director for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services and the Overdose Prevention Program. Since 2007, the MDPH program has trained and equipped over 100,000 people in Massachusetts’s communities with naloxone rescue kits, including people at-risk for overdose and their social networks. He provides primary care and office-based substance use care for patients with HIV at Boston Medical Center. He founded BMC’s inpatient Addiction Consult Service in 2015 and the Faster Paths low-barrier access substance use clinic in 2016. He previously was a site medical director for opioid treatment programs in Boston from 2007 to 2016. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed original research, review and case report journal articles focused on the medical complications of substance use, specifically HIV and overdose. He is principal investigator for CDC and NIH funded studies of community overdose interventions. For the NIH-funded HEALing Communities Study – Massachusetts, he served as the Care Continuum Core Director 2019-2022. For the 2022-2023 academic year he is taking a 12-month sabbatical to focus on his overdose prevention research
SARAH BAGLEY, MD, MSc (she/her)
Principal Investigator
Sarah Bagley is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and is board certified in Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and Addiction Medicine. She is the founder of the CATALYST at Boston Medical Center providing integrated substance use care and primary care for youth where she sees patients. Her passion is to ensure that all youth who use substances have access to high quality, equitable care to promote their health. Her research focus is on the engagement of young adults who use drugs and their families in care to minimize risk for overdose and the complications of drug use. She has funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and PCORI to conduct research about engagement in treatment and overdose prevention of young adults after nonfatal opioid overdose and reducing stimulant related overdose
SCOTT FORMICA, PhD (he/him)
Co-Investigator
Scott Formica is a Senior Research Scientist with Social Science Research and Evaluation, Inc. (SSRE) outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a doctorate of social policy and has over 20 years experience conducting applied research and evaluation on a variety of health and behavioral health factors with a specialization in substance misuse prevention policy. He leads the cross-site evaluation of the prevention set-aside of the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant (SAPTBG) in Massachusetts, the prevention services arm of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Office of Problem Gambling Services (OPGS), and the national Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC). In collaboration with colleagues at Boston Medical Center, Dr. Formica is part of the PRONTO research team working on a series of projects focused on understanding the evolution, operation, and effectiveness of post-overdose outreach programs.
ZIMING XUAN, ScD, SM (he/him)
Co-Investigator
Ziming Xuan is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health. He is a faculty member of the Primary Care Academic Fellowship Program, and a faculty member of the Transformative Training Program in Addiction Science (TTPAS) at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. He is a faculty member of the Injury Prevention Center, and a member of the Health Equity Accelerator at Boston Medical Center. He is a Frederick Pardee Faculty Research Fellow at Boston University. He is a social epidemiologist who is interested in understanding the influence of social-contextual determinants, especially policy and system-level interventions on health, particularly among vulnerable populations (i.e., youth, patients with substance abuse, and women). He is also interested in the methodologies involved in social-behavioral interventions to promote healthy behavioral changes and enhance community well-being. He received his Doctor of Science Degree (Sc.D.) in public health in 2010 and Master’s Degree (S.M.) in Biostatistics in 2008 from Harvard University.
JUSTEEN HYDE, PhD (she/her)
Co-Investigator
Dr. Hyde is a Medical Anthropologist and Health Services Researcher at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. She is also an Assistant Professor the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding life experiences that influence perceptions of health and experiences of health care. She is engaged in several studies within and outside VA that aim to improve person-centered for people experiencing homelessness, and people who are dependent on opioids. She is also deeply involved in the evaluation of the VA’s system-wide implementation of Whole Health Care. She is passionate about harm reduction and person-centered care and committed to conducting research that promotes the use of these approaches with all people. Dr. Hyde received her doctoral degree in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine.
SARAH KOSAKOWSKI, MPH (she/her)
Senior Research Project Manager
Sarah Kosakowski is the Associate Director of Research Operations in the Clinical Addiction and Research Education Unit at Boston Medical Center. She oversees a large research program focused on opioid overdose prevention, safer prescribing, and post-overdose outreach. Additionally, she lead efforts within the Informatics Core on the HEALing Communities Study to integrate community engagement and data driven decision making approaches into developing and implementing evidence-based strategies to reduce opioid overdose fatalities in Massachusetts communities. Sarah received her MPH from Boston University School of Public Health where she concentrated in health policy, law, and management and is passionate about translating research findings and public health data to communities in usable, interactive, and digestible formats.
STEPHEN MURRAY, MPH, NRP (he/him)
Harm Reduction Program Manager
Stephen Murray, MPH, NRP, is an overdose researcher, Harm Reduction Program Manager and the Director of the Massachusetts Overdose Prevention Helpline at Boston Medical Center. In 2021, he retired as a Lieutenant at a large regional ambulance service in Western Massachusetts, and had served as a first responder since 2013, having worked both as a firefighter and paramedic. He regularly shares for a national audience about his lived experience as a person who used drugs and overdose survivor. Stephen provides expert technical assistance around the topics of overdose prevention, emergency medical services and harm reduction to a variety of organizations, county and state governments across the country. He has guest lectured at Northeastern University, UMASS Medical School, Bennington College, Boston University, Temple University and Ohio State University, and has had work published in the American Journal of Public Health and Health Promotion Practice. In September 2023, he was featured in Episode 809 (“The Call”) on This American Life.
ALLY COGAN, MPH (she/her)Research Project Manager
Ally Cogan is a Research Project Manager in the Clinical Addiction and Research Education Unit at Boston Medical Center. She assists in the management of day-to-day operations and activities on research programs focused on opioid overdose prevention and post-overdose outreach. She received her MPH from Boston University School of Public Health where she concentrated in community assessment, program development, implementation, and evaluation. She is passionate about the development of equitable access to tailored healthcare for underserved populations and those typically overlooked by healthcare systems.
MORIAH WIGGINS (she/her)
Research Coordinator
Moriah is the current Research Coordinator at Boston Medical Center’s C.A.R.E. Unit and is helping to oversee several of the unit’s studies and projects. She is a Boston native, growing up in Boston’s South End neighborhood. She then attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering. Upon receiving her undergraduate degree, Moriah served multiple lab roles at Foundation Medicine in Cambridge. During her time at Foundation Medicine, Moriah was also able to pursue her passions for D.E.I., health equity, and community engagement as the founding co-chair of the company’s first employee resource network for communities of color. Continuing the pursuit of those passions has led to her joining the C.A.R.E. Unit team here at Boston Medical Center.
SHAPEI YAN Yan, MPH (she/her)
Senior Research Data Analyst
Shapei Yan is a Senior Research Data Analyst at Boston Medical Center with a demonstrated history of working in the field of opioid overdose and prevention. She is skilled in data manipulation using R and SAS programming, and is good at building predictive modeling using advanced statistical method. Her research area of interest including traditional logistic regression, interrupted time series analysis, emulated clinical trial using observational data, etc.
JIAYI WANG (she/her)
Research Data Analyst
Jiayi Wang is a Research Data Analyst at Boston Medical Center. She has spent the past two years working in public health research and is highly skilled at data manipulation and analysis with using SQL, SAS, and R for both primary and secondary datasets. She has experience in managing large longitudinal healthcare databases and conducting statistical analyses such as logistic regression, propensity score matching, and survival analysis.
ANDREW ROLLES (he/him)
Research Assistant
Andrew Rolles is a Research Assistant at Boston Medical Center where he assists in various studies related to harm reduction, and post overdose outreach. He attended College of the Holy Cross in Worcester where he earned his BA in Psychology. His role on the teams includes assisting in the data management of the projects, and performing the assessments, interventions, or interviews for participants. Having worked closely with participants and their subjective experiences, Andrew aims to integrate his experiences at BMC with his passion for cross-cultural mental health in order to become a therapist who can provide effective and culturally sensitive support to clients.