Biography
Dr. Livingston completed his PhD at the University of Montana and his predoctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at VA Boston Healthcare System, focused on evidence-based substance use and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment. Dr. Livingston is a Principal Investigator in the National Center for PTSD, Behavioral Science Division, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. His clinical appointment is in the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program, VA Boston Medical Center, Jamaica Plain.
Primary research interests include substance use and disorder, treatment access and outcomes, and predicting and preventing adverse events (e.g., overdose death, suicide); the longitudinal course of trauma, PTSD, and interrelated psychiatric sequelae; and health disparities. Current funding supports examinations of the impacts of federal policy changes governing medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) on access to care, treatment retention, and patient outcomes (PCORI LTF-2024C2-39670 & COVID-2020C2-11081; PI: Livingston), the long-term impacts of combat and other traumas among OEF/OIF/OND veterans (W81XWH-22-S-TBIPH2; PIs: Marx & Bovin), and various studies focused on VA health services and patient outcomes. Current priorities include improving access to MOUD and treatment retention, substance use and relapse tracking using electronic medical record data (via Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models), modeling risk for acute and substance-attributable death among veterans with SUD, and identifying and addressing health disparities.
Dr. Livingston is a primary or co-mentor on numerous early career development awards (e.g., K, VA CDA-2) and a mentor for the Boston University NIMH T32, VA Medical Informatics Fellowship, VA Interprofessional Advanced Fellowship in Addiction Treatment, and other psychology training programs at VA Boston Healthcare System.