Bio
Thomas Stopka is an assistant professor with the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at the Tufts University School of Medicine. He has contributed to and led numerous mixed methods, multidisciplinary, and translational studies focused on the intersection of opioid use disorder (OUD), overdose, and injection-mediated comorbidities since 1999. Stopka has employed geographic information systems (GIS), spatial epidemiological, qualitative, and biostatistical approaches in multi-site, multi-investigator studies and public health interventions to better understand and curb the opioid syndemic. He is currently an investigator on a NIDA-funded UG3 study focused on development and implementation of evidence-based interventions among rural opioid users in New England. He is the Site-PI of an NCATS-funded translational science intervention study to enhance distribution of naloxone in community pharmacies in Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Minnesota. Stopka has also led and contributed to studies focused on: (1) medication for OUD following nonfatal overdoses; (2) associations between potentially inappropriate opioid prescribing, overdose, and all-cause mortality; (3) spatial analyses to identify and characterize statistically significant hotspot clusters for overdose, HCV, and HIV; and (4) geographic access to naloxone and sterile syringes to prevent overdose and disease transmission.