Elvira Elek

For over 20 years, Elvira Elek has worked as an analyst, methodologist, project director, and co-investigator of multiple community-based evaluations and research studies related to substance use prevention interventions. Dr. Elek’s project work has included evaluating the “keepin’ it REAL” culturally targeted and school-based substance use prevention program, reviewing intervention adaption in rural settings, and longitudinally examining peer intervention in substance use. Additionally, her experience includes conducting process and outcomes assessments of community-based alcohol prevention initiatives in Georgia, leading formative research on preventing alcohol use during pregnancy, and developing and evaluating a media literacy alcohol prevention intervention based on active planning of messages.

Currently, she helps lead the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative Prevention Coordinating Center, assisting the efforts of 10 research projects that aim to prevent opioid misuse. Dr. Elek has also worked with multiple states and led cross-site national evaluations to assess Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration community-based programs focused on reducing alcohol use, prescription drug misuse, other substance use, and related consequences.

Dr. Elek has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and frequently presents at national conferences. She has experience with all aspects of the evaluation process, including project leadership, study design, survey design, literature review, data analysis, report writing, and dissemination. Dr. Elek enjoys leading and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners in medicine, communications, health behavior, statistics, social work, psychology, sociology, and education.