Jessica Magidson MS, PhD

Dr. Jessica F. Magidson is an Associate Professor in the Clinical area in the Department of Psychology, the Director of CESAR--the Center for Substance Use, Addiction & Health Research in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS), and an MPower Professor, through the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maryland College Park in 2013 and completed her predoctoral clinical internship in Behavioral Medicine and a postdoctoral fellowship in Global Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she was also an Assistant Professor and Staff Psychologist prior to returning to UMD in 2018.

Magidson is currently the PI of ten NIH-funded trials to evaluate peer and community health worker-delivered behavioral interventions to improve substance use and other health outcomes locally and globally in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, her program of research focuses on how to expand the reach of evidence-based behavioral interventions to address substance use in underserved settings in the US and sub-Saharan Africa using peer and lay health worker delivery. Her research program aims to foster bidirectional learning between ongoing research in sub-Saharan Africa and local collaborations in Maryland to improve the treatment of addiction and its impact on physical health comorbidities in underserved clinical settings globally.

Dr. Magidson is leading several trials funded by the NIH HEAL Initiative in partnership with University of Maryland School of Medicine evaluating peer-delivered interventions to improve retention in treatment for opioid use disorder, including (1) among low-income, minority individuals in Baltimore (R33DA057747; Magidson) and (2) in rural areas of Maryland via a telemedicine-enabled mobile treatment unit (R01DA057443; Magidson, Kattakuzhy). She is also leading a newly funded trial with Henry Ford Health to evaluate a peer-delivered intervention to support both substance use and depression outcomes in a certified community behavioral health clinic in Detroit (R01MH137237; Magidson, Felton).