Leo Beletsky

About

Leo Beletsky is a Professor in the Department of Public Health and Health Sciences at Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University. He holds a JD and MPH and is involved in research and teaching related to public health. His work focuses on issues within public health, with an emphasis on legal and policy aspects that impact health outcomes. As a faculty member, he contributes to the academic community through his expertise in public health law and policy, supporting the education of students in these fields.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychiatry
• Nursing
• Medical emergency
• Environmental health
• Criminology
• Internal medicine
• Emergency medicine

Selected publications

• Tackling the overdose crisis: The role of safe supply

  International Journal of Drug Policy · 2020 · 213 citations

  DOI

• Situating the Continuum of Overdose Risk in the Social Determinants of Health: A New Conceptual Framework

  Milbank Quarterly · 2020 · 163 citations

  Policy Points This article reconceptualizes our understanding of the opioid epidemic and proposes six strategies that address the epidemic's social roots. In order to successfully reduce drug-related mortality over the long term, policymakers and public health leaders should develop partnerships with people who use drugs, incorporate harm reduction interventions, and reverse decades of drug criminalization policies. CONTEXT: Drug overdose is the leading cause of injury-related death in the Unite…

  DOI

• Racial/Ethnic, Social, and Geographic Trends in Overdose-Associated Cardiac Arrests Observed by US Emergency Medical Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  JAMA Psychiatry · 2021 · 77 citations

  Importance: Provisional records from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through July 2020 indicate that overdose deaths spiked during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet more recent trends are not available, and the data are not disaggregated by month of occurrence, race/ethnicity, or other social categories. In contrast, data from emergency medical services (EMS) provide a source of information nearly in real time that may be useful for rapid and more granular su…

  DOI

• Intersectional structural vulnerability to abusive policing among people who inject drugs: A mixed methods assessment in California's central valley

  International Journal of Drug Policy · 2020 · 77 citations

  DOI

• The introduction of fentanyl on the US–Mexico border: An ethnographic account triangulated with drug checking data from Tijuana

  International Journal of Drug Policy · 2022 · 39 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Police Training to Reduce Occupational Needlesticks and HIV among Substance Users

  NIH · $3.2M · 2015–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Steffanie A. Strathdee

  University of California, San Diego

  238 shared

• Javier Cepeda

  Johns Hopkins University

  196 shared

• Daniela Abramovitz

  University of California, San Diego

  190 shared

• Jaime Arredondo

  British Columbia Centre on Substance Use

  189 shared

• Pieter Baker

  Johns Hopkins University

  175 shared

• Irina Artamónova

  University of California, San Diego

  157 shared

• María Luisa Mittal

  University of California, San Diego

  156 shared

• Mario Morales

  156 shared

Similar researchers at Northeastern University

• Phil Brownh-60
• Danielle Crookesh-11
• Nasim Ferdowsh-8