Jon E. Zibbell, PhD

Dr. Jon Zibbell, PhD. is a senior scientist in the Center for Behavioral Health Epidemiology, Implementation & Evaluation Research at RTI International where he conducts behavioral epidemiological research on risk factors and health outcomes associated with the illicit drug use. Dr. Zibbell is a medical anthropologist with 20+ years of field experience conducting mixed methods research with people who inject drugs (PWID). He is PI of a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded, Fentanyl Overdose Response and Community Engagement (FORCE) study in the proposed study sites in North Carolina. Dr. Zibbell is also multiple PI (MPI) for the NIH-funded fentanyl test strip (FTS) study conducted in Greensboro, NC, and Morgantown, WV. Before coming to RTI, Dr. Zibbell worked as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) health scientist in the Divisions of Viral Hepatitis and Unintentional Injury Prevention where he conducted epidemiological and surveillance research on viral hepatitis and drug overdose. As a CDC health scientist, Dr. Zibbell was the lead qualitative investigator for fentanyl outbreak investigations in Massachusetts and Ohio in 2016 and qualitative lead for CDC’s Scott County HIV outbreak investigation in Austin, IN. Dr. Zibbell was a member of the 2015 White House Heroin Task Force and helped the Obama Administration develop its heroin response strategy. He was also appointed to the CDC committee that developed HHS guidelines for the federal government’s funding of syringe service programs. In addition to research, Dr. Zibbell has conducted rapid ethnographic needs assessments for community-based harm reduction programs and continues to assist states and community organizations in developing evidence-based approaches to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with the HCV and overdose epidemics. Dr. Zibbell has published extensively on the negative health outcomes associated with substance use disorders and injection drug use and he holds a joint, adjunct appointment in the Center for the Study of Human Health and the Department of Anthropology at Emory University.