Leon Sawh, MPH

Research Project Director

Leon Sawh is a Research Project Director in the Division of Addiction Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School. He also holds an appointment as Site Project Coordinator for the Bedford Node of the VA’s National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans. The majority of his work focuses on the development and modification of treatment interventions for dually diagnosed homeless Veterans. Prior to joining the Department of Psychiatry at UMass Chan Medical School in 2009, he worked as a Research Associate at the Yale University School of Medicine (2009), a Teaching and Graduate Research Assistant while a student at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University (2006-2008), a Research Teaching Specialist in the Division of Addiction Psychiatry at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (2004-2006), and a Research Assistant (2003-2004) while an undergraduate student at the Florida State University. He is currently a Co-Investigator on a three-year SAMHSA grant that focuses on ending chronic homelessness in Central and Western Massachusetts (PI Smelson) and a Co-Investigator on an exploratory qualitative research study examining stigma in homeless Veterans (PI Rodrigues). He is also a doctoral student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Research Interest

Neighborhood Ecology of Crime, Homelessness, Substance Abuse and Mental Illness, Qualitative Research Methods.