Post-doctoral Fellow Spotlight: Mudia Uzzi
Dr. Uzzi is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH), Department of Mental Health. He received his PhD in 2022 from the BSPH, Department of Health, Behavior and Society and is receiving training in the Drug Dependence Epidemiology Funded Training Program within the BSPH.
What is your research interest area of focus? What led you to this interest?
I did my PhD in structural drivers of firearm violence in Baltimore City. And so, for my postdoc, I'm extending that research to also include substance use disorder issues, particularly overdose. I was looking at past and present structural racism, and seeing how that kind of intersects with one another to produce disparities and firearm violence. And so, now I'm extending my work to look at a different injury outcome, opioid involved overdose, fatal overdose in Chicago. So, just extending the work that I'm doing to looking at both firearm violence and opioid involved overdose. I'm also particularly interested in looking at firearm violence and opioid related overdose as like a pandemic. And so, thinking about common social and structural drivers to these two different injury related outcomes, and thinking about in the future having common interventions to address these 2 issues. I think a lot of times people have looked at the connection of firearm violence and overdose and substance use as a criminal justice issue, and I'm trying to think about it more within the injury context and social determinants of health.
In the beginning of my career, I was doing a lot of work around HIV and sexual health. In 2014, the week before I started my PhD program at a different institution, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri died and that kind of brought about the Black Lives Matter movement. And so, I was interested in thinking about violence as an issue. That first year I did a project looking at homicide review groups, where a collection of agencies come together and monitor all the homicide experiences that happen in a particular place the month or two before to see what are the common social structural issues, health issues, and think of ways to intervene on homicides. That was my first exposure to violence prevention and gun violence prevention in particular. I moved to Baltimore the year after the Baltimore uprising, so it was still very much on the mind after Freddie Gray died, and so I was trying to figure out how I could do something about that. I remember my first couple of years living in Baltimore, I would interact with a lot of people and they would tell stories about communities and racism, and thinking about how neighborhoods have changed over time and how that might have impacted the levels of violence in the community. And so, when I started my PhD program at Hopkins, Sarah Jacoby at UPenn, her red line paper came out the first semester I was in my PhD program and I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do,’ bringing all my interests together around structural and social determinants and firearm violence.
What research are you currently working on?
I'm doing a similar analysis as I did in Baltimore City, looking at past and present racism in Chicago and seeing how that relationship holds for overdose. But then I'm also interested in looking at like spatially, how does firearm violence and opioid overdose intersect with one another or not in Chicago. Looking at the parts of the city where there's a high burden of both, plus where there might be a high burden of one or the other, or parts of the city where there's none of the issues and seeing how social and structural determinants map on to these different areas. Like I said before, I feel like a lot of times people have been looking at the intersections of firearm violence and substance use from a consciousness lens, and I'm really trying to think about it from a more injury prevention lens.
How has partnering with the injury center helped you in your time at JHU
The Injury Center has been so amazing. There are so many people in the Center that have been so helpful, providing guidance, resources, and connections for my development as an injury prevention researcher. There are times where the Injury Center was so amazing to provide me resources to go to SAVIR to present my work and connect with people and figure out how to navigate this field with guidance, that's been super helpful. And then, just to see how different folks are approaching injury in different ways, it gives me ideas about how to approach. I love the field. I love the idea of basically this field that's so disciplinary and so broad, but we're all trying to come together to make change.
What are your future career plans? What is your dream job?
I'm trying to hopefully in the future be a tenure track faculty member. That's my aim right now, applying for jobs and seeing how that goes. I’m also thinking about my research and how to enact policy change for public good around these different types of injury outcomes. Ideally, I would like to be a tenure track faculty member and have one foot in academia and one foot in community.
What superpower would you like to have for the next year?
A superficial superpower is to be able to write papers very quickly, it's the thing I probably struggle with the most. I'm decent with grant writing, but for some reason writing a paper is such a muscle block for me.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I don't have that much free time, but I like to travel. I like to hang out with friends and family. I like to meet cool people, eat at nice restaurants, hike, and see nature. I've done a few cool hikes in Columbia and in the forest part of Baltimore City. I joined a hiking group called Outdoor Afro and so that’s been a really cool group.