Building Recovery Capital: Translating Social influence into Adolescent Addiction Recovery

Overview:

Dr. Hennessy’s research bridges developmental science, social network theory, and implementation research to understand and strengthen the social foundations of recovery among youth. Her research examines recovery not as an individual journey, but as a fundamentally social process shaped by peers, families, and communities. Drawing on mixed-methods, observational, and community-based approaches, this presentation discusses how insights from this work inform the design of adolescent-recovery-oriented systems of care and new network-based interventions that translate social influence into measurable recovery outcomes. The goal is to advance an empirically grounded, socially informed science of recovery that improves treatment outcomes and equity for young people affected by substance use.

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About the presenter

Emily Hennessy, Ph.D. is Associate Director and Director of Biostatistics at the Recovery Research Institute and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on adolescent substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery, supported by a K01 career development award from the NIAAA which examines social network and recovery capital mechanisms of the recovery process in adolescents using social identity mapping. 

She also advances evidence synthesis methods as an Associate Methods Editor for the Campbell Collaboration and serves on the editorial board of Psychological Bulletin.