Sara L. Calvin

Sara L. Calvin is a behavioral health researcher who has been at RTI since 2004. Her recent focus has been on the opioid epidemic, which complements a long-time interest in mental health and substance use research. Ms. Calvin currently serves as the Project Director for the Opioid Response Network (ORN), as a subcontractor to the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. This project is SAMHSA’s largest funded training and technical assistance contract to apply evidence-based practices in prevention, treatment, and recovery to meet needs identified by local health care providers and agencies. On ORN, RTI will analyze technical assistance participant and event data to create a series of data briefs and infographics. RTI will also conduct scans of publicly available substance use data to create monthly data spotlights for the Opioid Response Network website.

Ms. Calvin serves as the Associate Project Director for the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP) Training and Technical Assistance project at RTI. This cooperative agreement supports the COSSAP state and rural sites in reaching their program's stated goals in reducing the impact of opioids, stimulants, and other drugs of abuse at the state- and local-levels.

Ms. Calvin also serves as the Associate Project Director for Behavioral Health on SAMHSA’s Performance Accountability and Reporting System (SPARS). This is SAMHSA’s online platform for the management of substance use and mental health prevention, treatment, and recovery grantee data. On SPARS, Ms. Calvin provides project-wide vision and direction to the Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) team and the Analysis and Reporting team. The TTA team provides large-scale live and recorded trainings, learning communities, and customized TA to grantees to improve their service delivery. The Analysis and Reporting team responds to long- and short-term data turnaround requests from SAMHSA, assisting with Reporting to Congress, and other reporting.