Christina has over 10 years of experience applying her training in psychology, clinical social work, and mixed-methods research to tackle issues of prevention and treatment mental health conditions and substance use disorders. She has managed and contributed to the development of several surveys aimed at identifying stigma associated with chronic health conditions among health care providers, dentists, and the general population. She has also been involved in multiple projects aimed at developing and evaluating substance use prevention and health promotion programs for current and future health care providers, including screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) and peer-support services.

She is the project director for two community-engaged research studies funded by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission: Community Perspectives on the Legalization of Sports Betting, and Community Perspectives on Encore Boston Harbor Casino. Christina currently leads the qualitative data collection and analysis for the evaluation of the American College of Surgeon’s Geriatric Surgery Verification program. She was also the qualitative lead for NORC’s contribution to the third and final report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEMs) Review of Specific Programs in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation’s Research Applications of Electronic Recovery Records. Christina led the environmental scan for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s multi-site initiative EvidenceNOW: Managing Unhealthy Alcohol Use and contributed to the development of the Learners Guide to Adolescent Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

During her academic training, Christina helped lead the Community-Academic Partnerships on Addictions (CAPA), a partnership between The Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and community agencies aimed at training current and future workers, creating teaching-learning opportunities, and conducting collaborative research that improves systems of addiction services. She also collaborated on a study examining whether social support declines over time after incarceration and how change in support may vary by incarceration length for emerging adults (ages 18-25). The primary objective of her dissertation, Maintaining Natural Recovery from Prescription Opioid Use Disorder, was to provide an exploratory portrait of the recovery process from prescription opioid use disorder, from the perspective of women who had recovered naturally (i.e., without treatment, either formal or informal).