Current Scholars

Dr. Ryan JJ Buckley, MD, MPH, is an Instructor of Emergency Medicine and Medicine in the Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care, & Sleep Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. He works clinically in the Emergency Department and Medical Intensive Care Unit at Yale New Haven Hospital. His research aims to improve the care of critically ill patients, and he is uniquely interested in complex substance use disorders during critical illness, focusing on the use of medications for opioid use disorder and complex withdrawal syndromes. He is currently a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) K12-sponsored Yale-Drug use, Addiction, and HIV prevention Research (DAHRS) Scholar. His additional research interests focus on resuscitation and cardiac arrest. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he aims to develop interventions that reduce disparities in Indigenous and rural communities. Dr. Buckley earned dual-BS degrees at the Rochester Institute of Technology in International Studies and Biomedical Science and subsequently attended the University of Minnesota where he obtained his Medical Degree and Master of Public Health. He completed his Emergency Medicine Residency and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship at Yale. He resides in New Haven, and can often be found with his family in one of the city's incredible parks.

Maria Christina Herrera, MD, MSHP is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the Sections of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and a faculty scholar at PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Prior to her appointment at Yale, she was an attending physician in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at CHOP. She is currently funded by a National Institute on Drug Abuse K12 grant through Yale-Drug use, Addiction, and HIV prevention Research Scholars (DAHRS). Her present research focus addresses the intersection of the HIV and substance use epidemics for adolescents and young adults. She is particularly interested in optimizing access to HIV prevention initiatives for historically marginalized and disenfranchised young people with substance use. Dr. Herrera contributed to health care provision and public health efforts during her domestic training in Philadelphia, New York City, San Francisco, and with the Indian Health Service on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Whiteriver, Ariz. She has also worked both clinically and in a research capacity globally in the Dominican Republic, Peru and Mexico, all of which served to deepen her commitment to health equity and poverty alleviation. Originally from a small rural town in upstate New York, Dr. Herrera completed her undergraduate education with a Bachelor of Arts out of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Columbia University. She received her medical degree from Columbia University prior to completing her residency in the pediatrics PLUS program at the University of California, San Francisco, which trains pediatricians to advance health equity through community engagement and legislative advocacy. She then went on to complete her adolescent medicine fellowship at CHOP and graduated with a Master of Science in Health Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

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(DAHRS) 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.