Alene Kennedy-Hendricks is Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, with a joint appointment in the Department of Mental Health, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also serves as Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy. Trained as a health policy and health services research, Dr. Kennedy-Hendricks' research focuses on understanding how health and social policies affect populations with substance use and mental health conditions. Dr. Kennedy-Hendricks' primary areas of active research include: (1) the impact of insurance and financing reforms on health service use and spending among persons with substance use and mental health diagnoses; (2) the implementation of models that seek to integrate mental health care, addiction treatment, other medical care, and social services; (3) policy responses to the drug overdose crisis; and (4) policy communication research involving measurement of public attitudes, analysis of content of news media coverage, and evaluating the persuasive effects of messages framing health policy issues.