JHUCAYAH

Maria TRENT, MD, MPH

Dr. Trent is a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist and Director of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine. She is a Bloomberg-endowed Professor of American Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a Professor of Nursing at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Her peers have consistently ranked as a 'top doc’ serving adolescents in the greater Baltimore Metropolitan area.  She is an independent scientist that serves as the principal or key investigator for multiple research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies. A major focus of Dr. Trent’s research and clinical interest has been on reducing adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health disparities. She is also committed to producing the next generation of adolescent health scientists and directs the NIH-funded Adolescent Reproductive Health  T32 Training Program within Johns Hopkins Medicine. In addition, she is a sought-after speaker and the author of scientific research articles, editorials, book chapters, and patient-directed media materials in adolescent health.   Dr. Trent is a past president of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the American Sexual Health Association, the Pediatric Academic Societies (AAP representative), and Advocates for Youth. She is also on the editorial board of JAMA Pediatrics and other journal and book projects. She has been recognized for her work by medical associations and the lay press. She has subsequently emerged as an important voice in the field of adolescent sexual and reproductive health. 

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0016881/maria-trent

Hoover Adger, Jr., MD, MPH, MBA

Dr. Adger is Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine which he joined in 1984. Since that time, he has served as Director of the Substance Abuse Assessment/Intervention Team at The Johns Hopkins Hospital Adolescent Program and as Director of The Johns Hopkins Substance Abuse Faculty Development Programs. In February 1997, Dr. Adger was selected as the Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In July 1998, he returned to Johns Hopkins to resume his duties as a full-time faculty member. From 1999-2005, he served as Co-Director of the Strategic Planning Initiative funded by HRSA and SAMHSA/CSAT to advise the federal government and others on improving and expanding interdisciplinary education and training of health professionals in substance use disorders. He currently serves as the Florence Sabin College faculty leader in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Adger also is a past president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse and a past president of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics.

RENATA ARRINGTON SANDERS, MD, MPH, ScM

Dr. Sanders is an Associate Professor of adolescent medicine, pediatrics and internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her areas of clinical expertise include adolescent sexually transmitted infection and HIV, adolescent transition to adult care, caring for sexual and gender minority youth, and school-based health center needs. She has a joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Departments of Epidemiology and Health, Behavior and Society. She serves as the Medical Director of the Pediatric and Adolescent HIV/AIDS Program, Director of the PrEP Program (prepisforyouth.org) located in the Harriet Lane Clinic at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, co-Director of the Emerge Gender and Sexuality Clinic, and the co-Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Scientific Working Group, Johns Hopkins Center for AIDS Research. National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA, 1R01DA043089-01) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Baltimore City Health Department fund her work to identify HIV positive and high-risk HIV negative YBMSM, transgender and gender non-binary adolescents and link them to care, including primary, HIV and pre-exposure prophylaxis care services. She has served as a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as representative for Maryland Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics to the Maryland General Assembly to make recommendations regarding HIV testing laws in Maryland and has worked locally with the Baltimore City Health Department to improve HIV testing strategies in youth aged 15 to 24.

She served in multiple roles on international committees focused on adolescent health and have served nationally and internationally in the areas of adolescent HIV. She has been an active member of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) Abstract Review Committee (2009-2013), the Regional President of the Chesapeake (2014-2016), LGBTQI Special Interest Group Leader (2014-2019), Governance Review Subcommittee of SAHM (2019-current), Member-At-Large Representative, Board of Directors, Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (2016-2019), Nominating Committee, Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (2020-current) and reviewer to the International AIDS Society (IAS) Scholarship Program (2005-current). She joined the Governing Council of IAS in 2020.  She has served as a member of the Principal Investigator group of the Adolescent Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (ATN) and co-Principal Investigator at the Johns Hopkins Site from 2011-2016 where she led community-based protocols including Connect2Protect and the SMILE Linkage to Care (LTC) Program for HIV-infected youth. She has also served as part of the Abstract Review Committee of The International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research (ISSTDR). She has served on the Adolescent Medicine Subboard of the American Board of Pediatrics (2014-2019), the Research Advisory Committee of the American Board of Pediatrics (2020-current), and on the Board of Directors of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), (2019-current).

Dr. Sanders leadership achievements have been recognized in multiple awards and roles in committees nationally and across the institution. In 2007, she was selected out of 300 applicants to attend the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) Summer Institute in Applied Research on Child and Adolescent Development. She has been selected to participate in two career development programs for women faculty – the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Early Career Women Faculty Professional Development Seminar and the 2015 Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Leadership Program for Women Faculty. In 2017, she was one of 11 faculty awarded the Diversity Leadership Council’s (DLC) Diversity Recognition Award for the work with sexual and gender minority youth. In 2019, she was 1 of 23 researchers asked to present her work on Capitol Hill in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC where 602 registrants attended to learn about seminal research and programs across Johns Hopkins University.

Arik V. Marcell, MD, MPH

Dr. Marcell is an Associate Professor with a primary appointment in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and a joint appointment in the Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. He is a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist and provides primary and subspecialty consultation services at the Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Health at Johns Hopkins Harriet Lane Clinic and subspecialty consultation services in the Johns Hopkins Children’s Hospital. He is the Director of Adolescent Clinical Services at the Harriet Lane Clinic and has directed Title X program since 2003, a federal program designed to increase access family planning services to uninsured, underinsured and confidential seeking adolescents and young adults.

A major focus of Dr. Marcell’s research is on improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health and access to care, especially for male adolescents and young adults and he uses a variety of research strategies to examine this from patient and provider perspectives. He conducts interdisciplinary research that integrates behavioral science, health services research, and public health practice. He conducts community- and clinic-based intervention research using mixed-methods approaches. Dr. Marcell just completed serving as primary investigator on a CDC-funded project to train youth-serving professionals on a clinical guide to engage young males in sexual and reproductive healthcare services. He also served as the primary investigator on an Office of Population Affairs project to integrate HIV testing in the Title X-funded Harriet Lane Clinic. He is currently funded by an NICHD R21 award to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a text-messaging program (text4FATHER) to share with expectant lower income fathers during their partner's pregnancy through early infancy. He directs www.Y2CONNECT.org, a comprehensive youth resource guide for Baltimore City that was also replicated for use by Boston Public Schools. He recently led the first men’s health updates to the nation’s Title X Clinical Guidelines, using an evidence-informed approach that was published by the Office of Population Affairs and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 2014 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report entitled Providing Quality Family Planning Services. His efforts have ensured the inclusion of men in this national guidance.

Dr. Marcell is the immediate past Chair of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine's committee on Sexual & Reproductive Health and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Adolescence. He has extensive experience training health professionals on topics such as STDs, adolescent health, and male sexual and reproductive health. He has experience with mixed methods research, including qualitative methods (focus groups, in-depth interviews) and analysis; analyses with large secondary datasets (e.g., Add Health, NSFG); primary data collection and intervention work; conducting systematic literature syntheses; consensus-building/Delphi methodology; and quality improvement. He has received multiple teaching excellence awards for his course at the Bloomberg School of Public Health on Masculinity, Sexual Behavior & Health: Adolescence & beyond.

Errol L. Fields, MD, PhD, MPH

Dr. Fields is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, a board-certified pediatrician and adolescent medicine subspecialist, and Director of the ACGME-accredited Adolescent Medicine Fellowship Program. As a physician-researcher, he has dedicated his career to improving the health and life outcomes of adolescents and emerging adults, with particular attention to vulnerable and marginalized youth, through research, clinical medicine, education, and advocacy, affecting change at both the individual and community/population level.

His clinical work focuses on primary and subspecialty care for adolescents and young adults including gender-affirming care, inclusive sexual and reproductive health care, and treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Emerge Gender and Sexuality Clinic for Children, Adolescents and Young Adults and co-director of the PrEP is for Youth Clinic which provides PrEP and other HIV prevention services to Baltimore area youth at risk for HIV acquisition and Virtual Online Integrated SExual Health Services (VOISES) for Youth program which focuses on using virtual outreach and engagement to provide HIV testing and HIV Care/PrEP linkage to sexual and gender minority youth at risk for HIV in Baltimore.

His research focuses on using mixed methodologies to understand and reduce racial disparities in HIV among young Black, gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men as well as the evaluation of community-engaged practices for reducing stigma and medical distrust as key barriers to HIV prevention, treatment and research. Dr Fields is currently funded by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) Ending The HIV Epidemic grant (PS20-2010; MPI: Fields/Sanders). The objective is to develop a clinical and community outreach program (VOISES for Youth) to reach Black adolescent and young adult (AYA) men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women who have sex with men (TWSM) at high risk for HIV acquisition or transmission and link them to HIV PrEP or treatment services. He is also funded through Ryan White grants to provide medical services for AYA living with HIV in the PAHAP program. Dr. Fields has also worked extensively with BCHD on CDC funded PRIDE (PS15-1506) and THRIVE (PS15-1509) grants where he led the evaluation of community-engaged practices for reducing stigma and medical distrust as key barriers to HIV prevention, treatment and research among Black MSM. His other work has focused sexual networks, individual, partner, venue and environmental factors associated with STI and HIV transmission and acquisition in AYA Black MSM and using mixed methodologies to understand and reduce HIV disparities in this priority population.   

In addition to being the program director for the Johns Hopkins Adolescent Medicine Fellowship Training program, Dr. Fields is also the course director for the Topics in Interdisciplinary Medicine, Disparities and Inequities in Health and Healthcare course for first year medical students in the School of Medicine. He is also committed to the provision of evidence-based, structurally competent care of sexual minority and gender diverse youth and is involved in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education in this area.

Dr. Fields serves in several leadership roles including the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) Board of Directors, Executive Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Adolescent Health (SOAH), and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America National Medical Committee.

Pamela A. Matson, PhD, MPH

Dr. Matson is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  She is the Research Director for the Adolescent Medicine Fellowship.  Dr. Matson is an Epidemiologist who earner her M.P.H. in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases from Yale University School of Public Health and her Ph.D. in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A core focus of her research is to understand how relationship context manifests in unwanted outcomes, including sexually transmitted infections, substance use and intimate partner violence as well as how the broader social context of structural disadvantage impacts adolescent relationship functioning. She has conducted numerous prospective cohort studies, collecting intensive longitudinal data from adolescents in order to discriminate individual from contextual risk factors. She applies novel methodologies, including system dynamics and agent-based modeling, to address complex research questions. Dr. Matson’s engages with community partners to conduct policy-relevant work. Dr. Matson’s work was recognized with an award for statistical rigor and innovation in adolescent health research from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

Dr. Matson has been awarded funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Justice, state and philanthropic partners to conduct research studies aimed ultimately at addressing health disparities. She is also engaged in research and training to incorporate a family systems approach to improve prevention and early intervention of adolescent substance use in primary care settings and is actively involved in training of fellows to be eligible to sit for addiction medicine board certification. Dr. Matson serves several leadership roles in the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

Peter C. Rowe, MD

Dr. Rowe received his BA from the University of Toronto, and attended medical school at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He completed his residency training in Pediatrics, fellowship training, and Chief Residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

His clinical interests and research for the last 25 years have focused on medical conditions characterized by chronic fatigue. His work has focused on the pathophysiology of symptoms associated with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), including the overlaps of orthostatic intolerance, joint hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and adverse biomechanical strain.

He has directed the Chronic Fatigue Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center since 1996, where he is the inaugural recipient of the Sunshine Natural Wellbeing Foundation Chair in Chronic Fatigue and Related Disorders.

The Chronic Fatigue Clinic evaluates adolescents and young adults who have medical conditions characterized by chronic fatigue. We treat those with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), orthostatic intolerance, joint hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and athletic underperformance. 

Rachel H. Alinsky, MD, MPH

Dr. Alinsky is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is a board-certified internal medicine and pediatrics specialist, having completed Medicine-Pediatrics residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She recently completed her dual fellowship in adolescent medicine and addiction medicine at Johns Hopkins in 2020, and is now board-eligible in both specialties.

Dr. Alinsky focuses on health services and health systems research on access to addiction treatment for adolescents and young adults. Her fellowship projects included designing, implementing, and evaluating a Quality Improvement project for Pediatric primary care SBIRT (screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment), which led to additional SBIRT in-person and webinar trainings for pediatricians throughout Maryland through the Maryland chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She has investigated healthcare utilization patterns after opioid overdose in adolescents using a large Medicaid dataset, for which she was awarded Best Research Abstract at the 2018 Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Use and Addiction (AMERSA) Conference, and was a finalist for the New Investigator Award at the 2019 Society for Adolescent Health & Medicine (SAHM) Conference. This work, published in JAMA Pediatrics in January 2020, was highlighted in Francis Collins’ NIH Director’s Blog, the Chicago Tribune, US News & World Reports, Reuters, and multiple other national media outlets. Her work describing the availability of adolescent-serving addiction treatment centers throughout the United States and characteristics associated with offering medications for opioid use disorder was recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health; she was again named a finalist for the New Investigator Award at the 2020 SAHM Conference for this work, and won the 2020 Schwentker Award for Excellence in Research by Fellows and Residents at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

As new faculty in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Dr. Alinsky plans to continue her work providing clinical care to adolescents and building an adolescent addiction treatment program, as well as performing health services research focused on treatment of youth with substance use disorders. 

Kevon Jackman, DrPH, MPH

Dr. Jackman is an Instructor of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine who joined our team in 2021 after completing postdoctoral fellowship training in the Drug Dependence Epidemiology Training Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He is an HIV Epidemiologist and Prevention Scientist who has focused his career as an HIV/STI interventionalist focused on designing and implementing health information technology (Health IT) tools that empower youth to engage in their sexual and reproductive health. He has designed and implemented mixed-methods studies to understand perceptions of college-aged youth on using portals for receiving HIV/STI test results and for sharing electronic results with partners (R36 HS023057-01). His early dissertation research is one of the first studies to demonstrate that minoritized youth believe PHRs benefit from improving the occurrence of STI testing communication between partners and the accuracy of screening information shared between partners.

Dr. Jackman also brings multi-disciplinary research team experience. During my postdoctoral training, he served as a quantitative research team member on a study focused on validating metrics for sexual behavior stigma across the United states and sub-Saharan African countries and as a qualitative research team member on a study to understand perceptions of research participant to make it more meaningful to Black MSM in Baltimore.