Josiah “Jody” Rich

Jody Rich is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Brown University and a practicing Infectious Disease Specialist at The Miriam Hospital and at the Rhode Island Department of Corrections–caring for people with HIV infection and other diseases since 1994.

Jody has extensive expertise in the care and prevention of disease in addicted and incarcerated individuals, and understands the challenges, as well as the opportunities that the incarcerated setting offers. This informs and drives his research, which has focused on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of HIV/AIDS and co-morbid conditions, especially among incarcerated and addicted populations.

Jody has had continuous Federal Research funding for over two decades and has over 190 peer-reviewed publications, predominantly in the overlap between infectious diseases, addictions, and incarceration. More recently he has focused on the opioid epidemic. He is the Principal Investigator on the recently awarded COBRE on Opioids and Overdose.

Jody is the Director and Co-Founder of The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital. He advocates for public health policy changes to improve the health of people with addiction, including improving legal access to sterile syringes and increasing drug treatment for the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated populations.

He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018.

Jody participated in the second Square One Roundtable convening “Examining Criminalization, Punitive Excess, and the Courts: Implications for Justice Policy and Practice.”