Javier Cepeda

JAVIER CEPEDA, Ph.D., M.PH., is a professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology. Dr. Cepeda’s current research focuses on opioid use and infection, both in the US and in cross-border studies in Mexico. His research has branched into studies of policing and its impact on HIV transmission, drug policy reform, and drug treatment and prevention in several important cross-border studies, primarily in Tijuana, Mexico. He has also done cost-effectiveness work on opioid agonist therapy and other harm reduction strategies. Dr. Cepeda is also engaged in practice activities that have translated his research findings to inform policy and practice. His work has addressed issues of mass incarceration, drug policy, and HIV/AIDS for the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Caucus on HIV/AIDS, HIV treatment and harm reduction in Eastern Europe and Central Asia sponsored by the International AIDS Society and integration of HIV/TB/HCV in Kazakhstan.

Since his post-doctoral fellowship Dr. Cepeda has been working with data from the ALIVE study, a study started by Frank Polk, focused on understanding the impact of hepatitis C treatment among people who inject drugs.

Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Cepeda was Assistant Professor (Research) in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, University of California San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases (2015) and an M.PH. also in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases (2010) from Yale University. Dr. Cepeda completed his post-doctoral training in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public (2016) and the University of California San Diego (2017).