Alexander Walley

Bio

Alexander Walley serves as a co-investigator to provide his clinical and public health expertise in substance use care. Dr. Walley is a professor of medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, medical director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services, and an HIV primary care and addiction medicine physician at Boston Medical Center. His research focuses on the medical complications of substance use, especially overdose, and he has conducted multiple studies related to the opioid crisis and the integration of substance use care and general medical care.

Related Content

07/29/25 Research Highlight

Health and Economic Outcomes of Addressing Encampments of Individuals Using Opioids

Lead author Hana Zwick, a research data analyst at the Syndemics Lab, and colleagues published a new simulation modeling study in JAMA Network Open to understand the public health and economic outcomes of strategies that arrest, disperse, or house people who live in encampments and experience high-risk opioid use compared to the encampment status quo. […]

02/09/23 Policy Watch

New Federal Rules That Lower Barriers to Opioid Care Could Save Thousands of Lives

The two main medications that treat opioid use in the United States reduce overdose deaths by 50%. Yet fewer than one in 10 people with opioid use disorder (OUD) can access this kind of medical protocol, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Fortunately, a new law and a new federal regulation […]

06/04/21 Research Highlight

Characterizing Initiation, Use, and Discontinuation of Extended-Release Buprenorphine in a Nationally Representative United States Commercially Insured Cohort

Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are evidence-based treatments that help people reduce or stop using opioids. However, high discontinuation rates of MOUD pose a barrier to reducing opioid-related overdoses. Extended-release buprenorphine (XR-BUP) is a relatively new MOUD, approved in late 2017, that has the potential to increase retention because of its monthly dosing schedule. Currently, there is […]

09/11/19 Collaborations

Achieving Value in Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Paying for What Works (and Not Paying for What Doesn’t): Workshop Summary

More than 100 policymakers, practitioners, and researchers discussed and debated how payment policy can promote evidence-based, cost-effective substance use disorder treatment, in a recent workshop hosted by the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV and HIV (CHERISH) and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of […]

07/26/19 Policy Watch

CHERISH Workshop Addresses an ‘Unfortunate Reality’ of the Addiction Treatment Industry

Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and established in 2015, CHERISH is a five year collaboration of researchers from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) of the University of Pennsylvania, Weill Cornell Medical College, Boston Medical Center, and the University of Miami. Their work is focused on studying the health economics […]

07/24/17 Research Highlight

Medications for Opioid Use Disorder: Who is Receiving Which Treatment?

In response to the growing opioid epidemic in the United States, there is an increased focus on expanding evidence-based treatment using medications prescribed for substance use disorder, especially medications that can be prescribed in outpatient settings including buprenorphine and naltrexone. The Surgeon General’s report on facing addiction in America describes substance use disorders as chronic illnesses requiring […]

Alexander Walley, MD, MSc

Bio

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