Dr. Julia Lechuga
Department of Public Health
In Dr. Lechuga's lab, you will work with the development and testing of behavioral interventions to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as HIV among individuals afflicted by substance use disorders. I am currently working on two studies aimed at understanding the influence of individual and structural level factors on the reduction of HIV risk behaviors related to substance use and the optimal combination of strategies to help individuals who use drugs and live with HIV to sustain viral suppression.
Significance of the work
The studies are significant in light of the reduced resources to tackle substance use and infectious diseases in our border community. We employ a harm reduction approach.
Methods to be learned
In Dr. Lechuga's lab you will learn quasi experimental methods, such a repeated time series and experimental approaches including the Multi phase optimization strategy to building optimized behavioral interventions.