Services Research Branch

Contacts

Redonna K. Chandler, Ph.D.
Branch Chief
(301) 443-8768

Redonna K. Chandler, Ph.D. is currently the Chief of the Services Research Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She has served as Program Officer for numerous grants seeking to improve the quality of drug abuse treatment offered in criminal justice settings including the research collaborative Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies. Prior to joining NIDA, she worked for the Bureau of Prisons administering, implementing, and evaluating substance abuse treatment programs and services for federally sentenced offenders. Dr. Chandler is a licensed psychologist and received her doctoral degree from the University of Kentucky. She has written and published on a range of topics including body image, measuring treatment process and outcomes, treating offenders with substance abuse disorders, addressing co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorders, and substance abuse problems of adolescent girls.

Dionne J. Jones, Ph.D.
Deputy Branch Chief
(301) 402-1984

Dr. Jones is currently the Deputy Branch Chief of the Services Research Branch, Division of Epidemiology, Services and Prevention Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). She joined NIDA in 1998 and manages a grant portfolio that includes women and gender issues, rural services and treatment issues, HIV/AIDS, co-occurring disorders, and health disparities. Dr. Jones has planned and organized meetings on various topics germane to health disparities, and subsequently compiled the paper presentations which were published in special supplemental issues of Public Health Reports (2002) and the Journal of Urban Health (2005) for which she was a Guest Editor. Before joining the federal government, Dr. Jones served in a number of administrative and research capacities at nonprofit and for profit organizations, including the National Urban League, The Lewin Group, and Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. In addition, she was managing editor of The Urban League Review, a semi-annual policy research journal of the National Urban League, and newsletters for several professional associations. She has published journal articles, book chapters and a monograph in a number of public health-related areas.

Richard C. Denisco, M.D., M.P.H.
Medical Officer
(301) 594-4371

Dr. Denisco joined the Services Research Branch in September 2005. His grant portfolio emphasizes nicotine/tobacco use, chronic pain and prescription drug abuse, primary care medicine linkages, and Type II translational research. He received his undergraduate degree from Emory University and his medical degree from the University of Florida. He completed residency at the University of Florida and Fellowship at the University of Florida and the Texas Heart Institute, receiving Board Certification in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. Dr. Denisco has served as an attending Anesthesiologist and Department Chair, and as the Medical Director of two Chronic Pain Management and Rehabilitation Centers. He was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society and Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. His professional background also includes membership in ASAM and work with a community based treatment center. He has served on state and local legislative committees, where he developed an interest in public health and medical policy and analysis. He received a MPH degree from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Sarah Q. Duffy, Ph.D.
Health Economist
(301) 451-4998

Dr. Duffy joined NIDAs Services Research Branch (SRB), where she is responsible for the economics portfolio, in 2006. Prior to joining NIDA she spent eight years as a senior research economist at the Office of Applied Studies, SAMHSA, where she used data from large national data collection projects, including the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) and Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS), to conduct economic and health services research on substance abuse treatment and costs. Prior to joining SAMHSA, Dr. Duffy worked for the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission and the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality where she conducted research using hospital cost report and discharge abstract data. She has published several articles in the substance abuse treatment, health services research, and economics literatures. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Thomas M. Brady, Ph.D.
Program Offical
(301) 594-4381

Dr. Brady joined the Services Research Branch at NIDA in 2007 where his focus is treatment and service delivery issues of adolescents. Before coming to NIDA, Dr. Brady worked as a Service Fellow at SAMHSA's Office of Applied Studies, SAMHSA where he managed research projects analyzing drug abuse treatment in jails, gender differences in addiction treatment, and methadone dosage and its association with retention. He has also consulted for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Brady's research interests include women's health, health disparities, co-occurring mental disorders, and substance abuse treatment utilization. He completed his doctoral training at the University of Illinois, School of Public Health in Chicago where his research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. He also has received degrees from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Bennett Fletcher, Ph.D.
Research Psychologist
(301) 443-2274

Dr. Fletcher served as Chief of NIDA's Services Research Branch from 1996 to 2001, where he directed NIDAs program of health services research on drug abuse treatment, including research on the effectiveness of drug abuse treatment and research to study the impact of the organization, financing, and management of health services on the quality, cost, access to, and outcomes of treatment for drug abuse disorders. Recently, Dr. Fletcher has led initiatives to support research in drug treatment financing and economics, on the organization and management of treatment services, and on treating vulnerable populations, including adolescents, women, and those at risk for HIV infection. He has developed research programs on drug abuse treatment for those in the criminal justice system and recently developed a cooperative study on integrating drug abuse treatment in the criminal justice system. He is an investigator on the cooperative Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Studies (DATOS).

Thomas Hilton, Ph.D.
Program Official
(301) 435-0808

Dr. Tom Hilton joined NIDA's Services Research Branch in 1999. He has over 30 years experience in the research and conduct of organizational change. NIH's only industrial/organizational psychologist, Tom has conducted health service delivery research in industrial, general-medical, and addiction inpatient and outpatient settings. His work frequently addresses issues in human resource management, career development, personnel selection and screening, workteam performance, labor relations, and organizational change. Prior to joining NIH, he worked in a variety of offices within the Department of the Navy and the Federal Aviation Administration. His grant portfolio at NIDA emphasizes organizational and management science aspects of substance abuse (SA) service delivery. Projects focus on implementing, adopting, and sustaining those evidence-based policies, treatments, and business practices that improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of SA treatment. Effectiveness projects extend to modeling addiction recovery, examining associated health services systems, and the role played by patient neurological and cognitive-emotional health in achieving and sustaining recovery.

Akiva M. Liberman, Ph.D.
Program Official
(301) 402-0807

Dr. Liberman joined NIDA in 2007, where his focus is on services research with criminal justice populations. Before joining NIDA, Dr. Liberman served as a Social Science Analyst at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the U. S. Department of Justice. At NIJ, Dr. Liberman managed a research portfolio concerning juvenile justice, and juvenile violent, property, and drug offending and its development. He is the editor of the forthcoming volume, The Long View: A Synthesis of Recent Longitudinal Studies of Crime and Delinquency, to be published by Springer. He has been involved in conducting systematic reviews of the effectiveness of selected interventions to reduce or prevent violence involving children and adolescents, for the Guide to Community Preventive Services sponsored by the CDC. These reviews have been published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine and the Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Review. His research interests include the development of deviant and offending behavior over adolescence and adulthood, and the identification and implementation of evidence-based programs and policies. Dr. Liberman has published on topics including police stress, minority over-representation in the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and juvenile waiver to criminal court, as well as basic research in social psychology. He has conducted criminal justice research at Columbia University and the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, and taught in the Psychology Department at the University of Arizona. Dr. Liberman holds a Ph.D. in psychology from New York University.

Lori J. Ducharme, Ph.D.
Program Official
(301) 443-2279

Dr. Lori Ducharme joined NIDA in September 2008. Prior to joining NIDA, Dr. Ducharme was on the research faculty at the University of Georgia, where she was part of a collaborative investigator team studying the organization, delivery, and quality of addiction treatment services in the nation's specialty behavioral health care system. There, her research focused on the diffusion, adoption, and implementation of evidence-based behavioral and pharmacological therapies to treat substance use disorders. She has also previously worked as a project manager in contract research settings, focusing on large-scale evaluations of Federal performance monitoring systems related to drug abuse detection and treatment. In addition to improving the quality of treatment services at the program level, her research interests also include strategies to maximize the recruitment, retention, and performance of a skilled clinical workforce. At NIDA, Dr. Ducharme manages a portfolio of research studies that focus on the organization and management of addiction treatment programs; practice improvement in community-based organizations; and implementation research.