Current Scholars

Maria Herrera, MD, MSHP, from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia/ University of Pennsylvania, is an adolescent physician whose research area is prevention and treatment of substance use disorder & HIV in adolescents and young adults.

Dr. Caitlin Ryus is an Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine and the Co-Director of the Yale Emergency Scholars Fellowship. They earned their bachelor’s in psychology from Bryn Mawr College and MPH from Columbia University with a concentration in socio-medical sciences. After working several years in global health research at Oxford University, they pursued a career in medicine. Dr. Ryus attended Brown University for medical school where they concentrated in disaster medicine. They completed their emergency medicine residency and research fellowship through the Yale Emergency Scholars Program. Dr. Ryus was recently selected as one of the Yale-Drug use, Addiction, and HIV prevention Research Scholars. Nationally, Dr. Ryus has served on the executive board for the Academy of Women in Academic Emergency Medicine (AWAEM) and as the LGBTQ Committee co-chair for the Academy of Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine (ADIEM). At the local level, they lead the Yale ED Homelessness Task Force– an interdisciplinary team of community organizations, government representatives, street medics, social workers, and people with lived experience of homelessness dedicated to improving ED care among New Haven’s homeless population. Dr. Ryus’s current research combines the disciplines of community-engaged research with health services research and political epidemiology to evaluate the evidence bases for health and social policies. In their work, they examine health outcomes and service utilization among patients experiencing homelessness, healthcare workforce diversity, and the interplay between social vulnerability and disasters.