A UWindsor professor has been named the 2023 Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Social work professor Adrian Guta conducts research into HIV, substance use, and harm reduction. His appointment is hosted at Johns Hopkins through a pre-arranged affiliation between that institution and Fulbright Canada, whose research chair program promotes opportunities at select universities for exceptional scholars.

The award comes with $25,000 U.S., and Dr. Guta will be a visiting professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health from September to December.

“I’m honoured to receive the Fulbright and to collaborate with leading public health scholars at Johns Hopkins,” said Guta, who holds a Ph.D. in public health sciences.

He is on sabbatical and will reside in Baltimore this fall, with plans to conduct comparative research on the impact of unregulated fentanyl, which has contributed to tens of thousands of deaths across Canada and the U.S., and the feasibility of providing a “safer supply” of drugs in the U.S. context.

Safer supply is a Health Canada-sanctioned approach to reducing overdose deaths by providing prescriptions for pharmaceutical-grade alternatives to the toxic drug supply. Guta is involved in several CIHR and SSHRC-funded safer supply research projects.

“The early evidence from safer supply programs shows they are dramatically reducing the risk of overdose and changing the lives of people who use drugs across the country,” he said.

Guta has been leading a Canadian program of research on these issues through the pandemic and will collaborate with U.S. public health scholars, drug policy experts, and harm reduction practitioners to explore the transferability of the Canadian model.