R24-funded Post-doctoral Fellows
Akosua Dankwah
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Akosua Dankwah is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Recovery Research Institute (RRI) at Massachusetts General Hospital with a research interest in Christian-based recovery science. Dr. Dankwah completed her Dr.PH. at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Her doctoral dissertation examined the perceptions of Black American Rhode Island church leaders toward intervention models and harm reduction methods in the face of the opioid misuse crises. Her doctoral project was supported by the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Opioids and Overdose, based at the Rhode Island Hospital, a fellowship award from the F.X.B. Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, and a pre-doctoral fellowship from the R24 grant at the RRI.
Through her R24 post-doctoral fellowship, Dr. Dankwah is conducting a secondary data analysis of the National Recovery Study investigating Celebrate Recovery, a Christian-based 12-step Mutual Health Organization. Furthermore, Dr. Dankwah is conducting a mixed methods pilot study empirically examining the public health utility of Celebrate Recovery. In addition, her R24 fellowship allows her to learn more about recovery community centers (RCCs) by assisting in planning a seminar series about RCCs, opioid use disorder treatment, and RCC science.
Dr. Dankwah also holds an M.P.H. from the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island and a B.A. from Knox College in Illinois.
Benjamin L. Thompson Ph.D.
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Benjamin Thompson is a Research Fellow at the Recovery Research Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital with a long-standing interest in understanding addiction through the lens of recovery as a strategy of informing effective treatment approaches. To that end, he has explored multiple dimensions of addiction and recovery through a variety of disciplines. Dr. Thompson holds a B.A. in psychology (University at Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL), graduate degrees in theology (Samford University, Birmingham, AL) and science and religion (Boston University, Boston, MA), and a Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience (Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA). Ultimately, he is interested in bridging the gap between neuroscience and narrative science to better understand the neurocognitive underpinnings of adaptive identity change in the context of recovery. To that end, his current training, supported by an R24 grant through the National Institute on Drug Abuse, aims to advance the science of recovery community centers. Through this training, Dr. Thompson is building a program of research focused on autobiographical memory in recovery, with a specific focus on the impact of interpretations of turning point memories on recovery outcomes among recovery community center affiliates.