Magidson, Jessica

Bio

Dr. Jessica 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. 

Credentials. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from University of Maryland College Park in 2013 and completed her predoctoral clinical internship in Behavioral Medicine and 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. 

Current Research. She is currently the PI of seven 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. 

Clinical Interests. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise in behavioral activation and mindfulness-based interventions. She is committed to increasing access to evidence-based mental health and substance use care and supervising the training of doctoral students. She also has a deep passion for the outdoors and has been trained as a nature-informed cognitive behavioral therapist. She is leading a new initiative to develop models of nature-based delivery of behavioral activation and mindfulness-based approaches. This work aims to understand how to safely and effectively promote exposure to the natural world in marginalized communities globally. 

Active NIH-Funded Research Projects in the US

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).

With UMB, she is also co-leading a new initiative "ARTEMIS: Advancing Addiction Research and Treatment through Engagement with Rural Marylanders Impacted by PolySubstance Use" (R24DA061178; Magidson, Kattakuzhy) to create a national consultation model for engaging patients and community members in the research process in rural Maryland to support improvements in polysubstance use care delivery. Also with UMB she is co-leading with UMB a five-year trial (R01DA061324; Magidson, Rosenthal) to evaluate a peer-delivered intervention to support adherence to long-acting injectable forms of medication for HIV treatment and prevention in two community sites in DC and Baltimore. She is also co-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). 

Active NIH-Funded Research Projects in South Africa

In South Africa, she is leading a trial in partnership with University of Cape Town "Project Khanya" (R01DA056102; Magidson) to evaluate a stepped-care, peer-delivered intervention to improve HIV medication adherence and substance use in primary care in Cape Town, South Africa. She is also leading an NIH-funded project with the South African Medical Research Council and Curtin University in Australia on how to support community health workers to deliver home-based mental health and HIV services (R21TW012347; Magidson, Myers, Carney).  

Nature-Based Delivery of Evidence-Based Mental Health Care Globally Initiative

She is launching a new initiative to gather patient and provider perspectives on how to incorporate nature-based delivery of behavioral activation and mindfulness-based approaches to reduce mental health and substance use. This work is conducted throughout active trials throughout Maryland (Baltimore, Eastern Role) with peer recovery specialists working in opioid use disorder treatment, in DC focused on individuals at risk or living with HIV, as well as in the context of peer- and community health worker models in South Africa. Goals are to capture patient and provider perspectives to (1) adapt existing behavioral activation and mindfulness interventions to promote nature exposure; (2) evaluate nature-based delivery as an implementation strategy for task shared mental health and substance use care globally; while also (3) promoting provider well-being and reduced burnout in task sharing models.