Hillary Samples
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Public Health & Epidemiology
Drug overdose has become a leading cause of death among U.S. adolescents and young adults, driven largely by the spread of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid lethal in tiny amounts.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
drug overdose
nonfatal overdose
near-fatal overdose
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2031
What they work on
- Assess trends from 2016-2025 in near-fatal and fatal overdose events among Medicaid-enrolled youth aged 12-29, broken out by drugs involved and intent and by age group spanning early adolescence through early adulthood.
- Identify behavioral health treatment trajectories in the six months following a nonfatal overdose treated in an emergency department or inpatient setting, and test how these trajectories differ by overdose type.
- Quantify one-year incidence of repeat overdose and all-cause mortality after an index overdose, using Medicaid claims linked to mortality records.
- Develop a predictive model of repeat overdose and death that identifies modifiable individual, clinical, and health system risk factors, using Medicaid data linked to health system and population measures.
More about the research
Overdoses that people survive have risen too, and surviving one sharply raises the chance of another overdose and of dying. An emergency department or hospital visit for an overdose is therefore a rare moment when a very high-risk young person is in contact with the health system - but there is little evidence to guide what should happen at discharge, and studies so far point to weak connections into behavioral health care.
Why it matters
Clinicians discharging a teenager or young adult after an overdose currently have little data on what happens next or who is most likely to overdose again. By quantifying post-overdose treatment gaps, repeat overdose, and death in a national Medicaid population, this work could inform discharge planning, targeting of behavioral health follow-up, and public health strategies for the age groups and overdose types at highest risk.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alex Manini
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify novel fentanyl analogues (fentalogs), psychoactive adulterants and nitazenes, a class of potent synthetic opioids, in emergency department overdose patients using toxicology lab analysis across the multicenter ToxIC network.
Barbara Andraka-Christou
University of Central Florida, FL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build a public, year-by-year database of state statutes, regulations and executive orders (2014–2024) meant to promote medications for opioid use disorder after ED overdose visits, using expert-guided searches of NexisUni legal software.
Maria Alva
Georgetown University, DC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Compile a database of Medicaid managed care organization and state program features over 2016-2025, organized by a healthcare conceptual framework, that could plausibly influence the quality of type 2 diabetes care.
The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
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