In the News: Shannon Monnat

"A crisis like COVID-19 is bound to exacerbate existing racial-ethnic and socio-economic disparities. Not only within the healthcare system, and in terms of health outcomes, but also within the criminal justice system," says Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion.

"At the front end, not testing these groups [poor and racial-ethnic minority populations] at the same level is increasing the risk of fatality rates," says Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion.

Shannon Monnat, the Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion, has received a grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation for her project, which is designed to improve education for health care providers concerning Plans of Safe Care (POSC) for mothers with addiction and for babies who suffered opioid exposure prior to their birth. 

"While life expectancy has continued to improve in large highly educated urban hubs, life expectancy declines have been much more pronounced in former industrial cities, much of Appalachia, and in many small towns and cities across America’s heartland," says Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion.

A group comprised of four researchers — representing the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and the Maxwell X Lab — will receive approximately $500,000 over three years in support of their research on different opioid court treatment interventions across New York State. 

While the urban opioid crisis is a crisis of heroin and illegal drugs, the rural opioid crisis of prescription drugs is largely a story of growing spatial inequality and of places left behind, most often occurring in places that tend to have a declining industrial base, finds a study co-authored by Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion.

“Many people who misuse opioids are also misusing other substances, and a common driver of this is self-medicating,” says Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion, whose research examines the connections between social disadvantage, place, public policy and health.