Jessica Magidson

Dr. Jessica Magidson is an Associate Professor in the Clinical area in the Department of Psychology. In January 2023 she assumed the position as 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.

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.

She is currently the PI of nine 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 U.S. 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.