Keynote speaker: Sarah Pedersen, Ph.D.

Keynote title: For the Communities Counting on Us: Addiction Research Moves Forward

Sarah Pedersen, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Pedersen is a licensed clinical psychologist with a long-standing interest in providing mental health care to individuals with minoritized identities and examining social and structural drivers of inequities in substance use related problems. She is currently the principal investigator on two 5-year R01 research grants from the National Institutes of Health. In these projects, she has integrated stress exposure, discrimination, personality characteristics, environmental contexts, and cognitions to identify when and why people are at risk for alcohol and substance use-related problems. Dr. Pedersen is the Director of Research for Community-engagement and Partnership and the Research Equity and Community Health Collaborative within the Department of Psychiatry. In these roles, she and colleagues are committed to returning research back to communities, growing and sustaining community partnerships to conduct high impact research, and training future scientists in equitable and just research design.