Natasha Ludwig-Barron, PhD, MPH

Natasha Ludwig-Barron, PhD, MPH, is a Chicana/Mexican-American Epidemiologist and Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Department of Medicine, Division of Prevention Science. She brings more than 15-years of public health research and practice experience applying mixed methods and ecological approaches to understanding the co-occurring epidemics of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, substance use, and gender inequity, with the goal of improving the health and wellbeing of marginalized communities in the US, Mexico and Kenya. Dr. Ludwig-Barron earned her MPH at Emory University, PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Washington and completed her post-doctoral training at UCSF. Since joining UCSF, Dr. Ludwig-Barron has conducted three community-based, harm reduction pilot studies along the Texas-Mexico Border and was awarded a K01 entitled Proyecto VIDA, which merges implementation science with phylogenetic analysis to address the co-occurring epidemics of HIV, hepatitis C, and opioid use among people who inject drugs in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. As a C-DIAS Fellow, Dr. Ludwig-Barron will apply implementation science frameworks and methodologies to Latino communities in order to strengthen translational impact, scalability, and equity of substance use interventions. Broadly, her research aims to inform international, national and local substance use policies.