People

Magdalena Cerda
Magdalena Cerdá, DrPH
NYU Langone Health - Professor, Department of Population Health and Department of Emergency Medicine
NYU Langone Health - Director, Center on Opioid Epidemiology and Policy
Email: Magdalena.Cerda@nyulangone.org
Education
DrPH, Public Health, Harvard University, School of Public Health
MPH, Public Health, Yale University
BS, Communication, Cornell University, Agriculture and Life Sciences
Research Interests
Opioid use disorder, Violence prevention, Firearms, Prescription drugs, Heroin, Drug overdose, Social determinants of injury, Marijuana, Homicide, Suicide
BIO
Magdalena Cerdá is Professor of Population Health at New York University Langone Health and Director of the NYU Center on Opioid Epidemiology and Policy. Her work integrates approaches from social and psychiatric epidemiology to examine how social contexts shape violent behavior, substance use and common forms of mental illness. Her expertise extends to the epidemiology and policy determinants of substance use with a particular focus on opioid and marijuana use, including two NIDA-funded studies to examine the impact that prescription opioid policies and marijuana legalization have on opioid prescribing, chronic pain, and opioid overdoses, and a NIDA-funded study to examine the impact that national marijuana legalization in Uruguay has on substance use.  Dr. Cerdá also uses agent-based models to simulate the potential impact of city- and neighborhood-level prevention programs and policies on violence. Prior to joining NYU, Dr. Cerdá served as the Vice-Chancellor’s Endowed Chair on Violence Prevention at UC-Davis and on the faculty at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Cerdá received her DrPH from Harvard University and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan.
Projects
Principal Investigator, Comparative Evaluation of Overdose Prevention Programs in New York City and Rhode Island. Active
Principal Investigator, Examining the Synergistic Effects of Cannabis and Prescription Opioid Policies on Chronic Pain, Opioid Prescribing, and Opioid Overdose. Active
Principal Investigator, Large Data Spatiotemporal Modeling of Optimal Combinations of Interventions to Reduce Opioid Harm in the United States. Active
Principal Investigator, Understanding the Short- and Long-term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Overdose Crisis. Active
Principal Investigator, Health and Social Consequences of Marijuana Legalization. Completed
Principal Investigator, Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and Opioid-Related Harm. Completed
Principal Investigator, Reducing Drug-Related Mortality Using Predictive Analytics: A Randomized, Statewide, Community Intervention Trial. Completed
Principal Investigator, Substance Abuse History, Mental Health and Firearm Violence: From Evidence To Action. Completed
Publications

Recent

Skinner A, Neill DB, Allen B, Krieger M, Gray JY, Pratty C, Macmadu A, Goedel WC, Samuels EA, Ahern J, Cerda M, Marshall BDL (2025).
Assessing user engagement with an interactive mapping dashboard for overdose prevention informed by predictive modeling in Rhode Island
Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 31 (6), E330-E337. doi: 10.1097/PHH.0000000000002200.

Krawczyk N, Miller M, Bórquez I, Rutherford C, Bobashev G, Mund P, Keyes K, Cerda M, Jordan AE (2025).
Simulating the impact of methadone prescribing and pharmacy dispensing on opioid treatment and overdose in New York State: A study protocol for an agent-based modeling study
PLoS One, 20 (10), e0335123. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0335123. PMCID: PMC12543120.

Bushnell G, Keyes KM, Zhu Y, Cerda M, Gerhard T, Hasin D, Iizuka A, Lloyd K, Samples H, Olfson M (2025).
Stimulant use disorder diagnoses in adolescent and young adult Medicaid enrollees
JAMA Psychiatry [Epub 2025 Oct 15]. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.2864.

Choi S, Hong S, Fawole A, Heck A, Lincourt P, Jordan AE, Hussain S, O'Grady MA, Bao Y, Cleland CM, Adhikari S, Cerda M, Krawczyk N, Kyanko K, McNeely J, Cunningham C, Mijanovich T, Howland R, Thornburg O, Hutchinson M, Liebmann E, Neighbors CJ (2025).
Advancing person-centered care: Protocol for quality measurement and management (QM2) in the New York State system for opioid use disorder treatment
PLoS One, 20 (9), e0330882. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0330882. PMCID: PMC12478935.

Wisell CG, Hasin DS, Wall MM, Alschuler D, Malte C, McDowell Y, Olfson M, Keyes KM, Cerda M, Maynard CC, Keyhani S, Martins SS, Mannes ZL, Livne O, Fink DS, Bujno JM, Stohl M, Saxon AJ, Simpson TL (2025).
Cannabis legalization and cannabis use disorder by sex in Veterans Health Administration patients, 2005-2019
Substance Use and Misuse [Epub 2025 Sep 15]. doi: 10.1080/10826084.2025.2554866.


Notable

Castillo-Carniglia A, Ponicki W, Gaidus A, Gruenewald P, Marshall BDL, Fink DS, Martins SS, Rivera-Aguirre A, Wintemute G, Cerda M (2019).
Prescription drug monitoring programs and opioid overdoses: Exploring sources of heterogeneity
Epidemiology, 30 (2), 212-220. doi: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000950. PMCID: PMC6437666.

Cerda M, Wall M, Feng T, Keyes KM, Sarvet A, Schulenberg J, O'Malley PM, Pacula RL, Galea S, Hasin DS (2017).
Association of state recreational marijuana laws with adolescent marijuana use
JAMA Pediatrics, 171 (2), 142-149. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.3624. PMCID: PMC5365078.

Dr. Cerdá's Google Scholar Profile
Selected Press