PhD student Alexandra Karden, BSc, MSc

alexandra.karden@suchthilfe.at

Alexandra Karden, BSc, MSc is a PhD student in the Grabovac Group/Community Health Lab currently enrolled at the Public Health Doctoral Program of Applied Medical Sciences at the Medical University of Vienna. She is currently working as a research employee for the addiction prevention program checkit! at Suchthilfe Wien gGmbH in Vienna. Alexandra graduated in Psychology (BSc and MSc) with a specialization in Brain & Mind at the University of Vienna.

She joined checkit! in 2016 because she has a great interest in working on the intersection between psychology, psychopharmacology and public health and applying her research to a project that is working with people who use drugs (PWUD). Her thesis focuses on the impact of integrated drug checking on drug and safer use behavior of PWUD using the service in Vienna as well as its general accessibility and usage in Austria. With her PhD, she aims to contribute to the evidence base on drug checking in general and to provide organizations working with PWUD, the public as well as decision-makers with comprehensive understanding of this topic. After her PhD, she plans to use her acquired skills to further develop research on addiction prevention and drug checking.