Roles:
- PhD Candidate, Yale School of Public Health
Contact:
Biography:
With fifteen years of professional experience in the fields of HIV prevention and harm reduction, Mr. Viera has a demonstrated interest in improving the evidence around the effectiveness of interventions that prevent HIV transmission by addressing drug use. His particular research interests are in the design, adaptation, and evaluation of harm reduction interventions to address substance use and its health consequences.
For over a decade, Mr. Viera has worked to build the capacity of community-based organizations and health departments to implement evidence-based interventions to address HIV, hepatitis C, opioid overdose, and other related health conditions. His recent education has focused on building the research skills needed to develop and evaluate interventions to address substance use and to identify and assess strategies to increase the uptake of these evidence-based interventions. This builds off of his previous academic experience, which focused on the psychology of behavior and behavior change within the context of public health. When pursuing his MPH at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, his capstone project focused on the development of an online HIV prevention intervention for young men who have sex with men of color.
Mr. Viera is in his third year of a PhD program in Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale University. Formerly a pre-doctoral fellow with the Center on Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (T32MH02003116A1, Kershaw), he has conducted research focused on developing a social network intervention to promote uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention, under the guidance of Dr. Trace Kershaw. Currently, he is working on a pair of research projects with Dr. Robert Heimer. The first of these projects centers on the development and pilot testing of an intervention to prevent hepatitis C virus (HCV) reinfection among persons in treatment for HCV. The other project is an evaluation of the outcomes associated with continuation of methadone during incarceration among individuals with opioid use disorder. In addition to these projects, he is working with Dr. Kershaw on his RENEW project, exploring how geospatial and network-level determinants relate to relapse to alcohol use among individuals released from treatment for alcohol use disorder. Mr. Viera plans to use the skills honed through these projects to develop app-based interventions for individuals with substance use disorders. His long-term goals are to continue to build the selection of evidence-based harm reduction interventions as part of a research institution.
CIRA Affiliated Projects:
