Shabbar Ranapurwala
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Public policies such as health insurance rules and wage laws can raise or lower death rates from overdoses and violence. These harms fall most heavily on racial and ethnic minority groups.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
injury epidemiology
opioid use disorder
drug overdose
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2028
What they work on
- Examine racial inequities in Medicaid enrollment and in post-release access to MOUD and mental health care among formerly incarcerated people, using North Carolina's 2023 Medicaid expansion and linked records from 2013–2025.
- Estimate how Medicaid enrollment, MOUD access and mental health services affect fatal and nonfatal overdoses after release, and identify why benefits differ between racial groups.
- Test whether state minimum wage increases reduce community violence victimizations, assault injuries and homicides across all 50 states, using synthetic controls and controlled interrupted time series on six national datasets.
- Estimate how the COVID-19 pandemic affected community violence, and whether minimum wage increases and economic impact payments reduced that effect, with comparisons by race, sex, age and rurality.
More about the research
The two projects here use quasi-experimental designs to measure what such policies actually do. These designs treat policy changes as natural experiments, comparing outcomes before and after a change or against similar places without it. Both projects use large linked datasets and pay close attention to racial and other inequities.
Why it matters
These studies could guide policymakers in using Medicaid expansion and better links to addiction and mental health care to prevent overdose deaths among people leaving incarceration, especially racially minoritized individuals. They could also show whether minimum wage increases and economic relief payments work as violence prevention tools. That evidence could help reduce homicides, assaults and related racial, gender and geographic inequities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
CE25-149 - The effect of Medicaid expansion on medications for opioid use disorder, mental health care, and overdose mortality among formerly incarcerated people
NIH · Sep 2025 – Sep 2028
RFA-CE-23-004: Structural factors Impacting community Violence (STRIVE): The Role of Minimum Wage, COVID-19, and Discrimination
NIH · Sep 2023 – Sep 2027
Closest labs
Nicole Kelly
University of California-San Diego, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Evaluate how North Carolina's Medicaid expansion affected use of long-acting injectable HIV therapy (LAI-ART) and opioid use disorder medication (LAI-MOUD) among people with both conditions, using quasi-experimental policy evaluation methods.
Barbara Andraka-Christou
University of Central Florida, FL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build a public, year-by-year database of state statutes, regulations and executive orders (2014–2024) meant to promote medications for opioid use disorder after ED overdose visits, using expert-guided searches of NexisUni legal software.
Steffani Bailey
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Public Health & Epidemiology
Examine rates of opioid use disorder care — diagnosis, buprenorphine and other medication orders, retention on medication, and behavioral health visits — before, during, and after telehealth expansion, using nearly a decade of OCHIN electronic health record data from community health centers in 35 states.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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