Carrie Oser

Education:
Ph.D., University of Georgia
Biography:

Dr. Carrie Oser, Di Silvestro Endowed Professor and University Research Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Kentucky.  She earned her BA from the University of Kentucky and a MA and PhD from the University of Georgia. Dr. Oser has received numerous awards for her mentorship of more than 50 graduate students and early career-stage faculty, with a commitment to individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. As an addiction health services scholar, she leads interdisciplinary teams in conducting rigorous high-impact research to improve the lives of individuals with substance use disorders and promote health equity. Dr. Oser has been continuously funded as a Principal Investigator for almost 20 years by the National Institutes of Health on seven awards totaling more than $7 million and as a Co-Investigator on awards totaling more than $135 million using epidemiological longitudinal cohort, social network, implementation science, community-engaged research, and intervention approaches. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers, and her work has been featured in newspapers and NPR. Dr. Oser has provided congressional testimony and advised policy makers on best practices related to substance use disorder treatment.

Research Interests:
addiction health services
HIV risk behaviors and interventions
corrections
implementation science
social networks
health disparities
Administrative Roles

Dr. Oser has held several leadership positions at UK. Currently, she is the Associate Director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation and Associate Director of the Substance Use Priority Research Area within the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Kentucky. She served as the Interim Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her other administrative roles include service as the Associate Department Chair (2017-2021, 2023-2026) and the inaugural Co-Director of the Health, Society, & Populations Program, an interdisciplinary health-focused social science undergraduate major (2014-2017).

Teaching & Mentoring

Dr. Oser teaches a variety of criminology courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  She co-developed a course based on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program pedagogy (http://www.insideoutcenter.org/).  This course brings together 16 UK undergraduate students (i.e., “outside students) with 16 persons who are incarcerated (i.e., “inside students”) to study as peers in a college class behind prison walls. The goal of this course is to examine the use and misuse of drugs through the lens of sociological analysis with a specific focus on policy and treatment. In addition, she has served as a mentor to numerous graduate students, post-doctoral candidates, and junior faculty members, several of which have been supported on NIH fellowships. Dr. Oser was the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student Mentoring Award in 2016 and the Outstanding Peer Faculty Mentoring Award in 2023 from the College of Arts & Sciences, the Mentor Recognition Award from the CCTS in 2015, and the Women in Science & Medicine Mentorship Award in 2018. 

Health, Society, & Population Program

For additional information on the Health, Society, and Population (HSP) Program, please see http://health.as.uky.edu.

Selected Publications:

Note: * denotes graduate student

Oser, C., *Batty, E., *Booty, M., Eddens, K., Knudsen, H., Perry, B., *Rockett, M., & Staton, M.  (2023). Social ecological factors and medication treatment for opioid use disorder among justice-involved rural and urban persons: The Geographic variation in Addiction Treatment Experiences (GATE) study protocol. BMJ Open, 149, 209051. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.josat.2023.209051

Oser, C., *Strickland, J., *Batty, E., *Pullen, E., & Staton, M.  (2022). The Rural Identity Scale (RIS): Development and validation. Journal of Rural Health, 38, 303-310. https://doi.org/10.1111/jrh.12563.

Perry, B., Odabas, M., Yang, K., Lee, B., *Kaminski, P., Aronson, B., Ahn, Y., Oser, C., Freeman, P, & Talbert, J.  (2022). New means, new measures: Assessing prescription drug seeking indicators over ten years of the opioid epidemic. Addiction, 117(1), 195-204. doi.org/10.1111/add.15635

*LeMasters, K., Oser, C., Cowell, M., Mollan, K., Nowotny, K., & Brinkley-Rubinstein, L.  (2021). Longitudinal pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) acceptability, initiation, and adherence among criminal justice-involved adults in the USA: The Southern Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Study (SPECS) protocol.  BMJ Open, 11(7):e047340.  

Staton, M., Webster, J.M., Leukefeld, C., *Tillson, M., Marks, K., Oser, C., Bush, H.M., Fanucchi, L., Fallin-Bennett, A., Garner, B.R., McCollister, K., Johnson, S., & Winston, E. (2021). Kentucky Women’s Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN): A type 1 effectiveness-implementation hybrid trial to increase utilization of medications for opioid use disorder among justice-involved women. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 128: 108284. http: //doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2021.108284.

The HEALing Communities Study Consortium. (2020). The HEALing (Helping to End Addiction Long-termSM) Communities Study: Protocol for a cluster randomized trial at the community level to reduce opioid overdose deaths through implementation of an integrated set of evidence-based practices. Drug & Alcohol Dependence, 217: 108335. https://doi.org/0.1016/j.drugalcdep.2020.108335.

Oser, C., *Pullen, E., Stevens-Watkins, D., Perry, B., Staton-Tindall, M., Havens, J., & Leukefeld, C. (2017).  African American women and sexually transmitted infections: The perception of the contextual influence of unbalanced sex ratios and individual risk behaviors. Journal of Drug Issues, 47(4), 543-561. PMC5624720.

Oser, C., & *Harp, K.L.H.  (2015). Treatment outcomes for prescription drug misusers: The negative effect of client residence and treatment location geographic discordance. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 48(1), 1-18. PMC4250328.

PubMed Publications*: 
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