At the Intersection of Research and Lived Experience: the Personal and Professional Journey of Research Scientist, Patrick Hibbard

There’s lived experience…and there’s lived experience. Patrick Hibbard, Assistant Research Scientist at Chestnut Health Systems, has had anything but a conventional career path. Patrick shares his journey, from incarceration to his current role with Chestnut, and how his background inspires and informs his work. We discuss:   

• How he uses econometrics and quantitative methods in evaluating public health interventions. 
• The challenges of causal inference in public health research and the need for quantitative data to measure community-level impacts.
• The need to balance research with lived experience. 
• The effectiveness of drug courts and their evolution (while drug courts can be effective, they may not always be the best approach, especially where there are structural inequities in policing). 
• The connections between/among different organizations in the recovery ecosystem. 

What’s ultimately so compelling about Patrick’s story is how he’s used it in combination with data-driven insights to increase community-level impacts, improve public health…and save lives.