Dr. Jerry Stahler is currently Professor Emeritus having recently retired after 38 years of service at Temple University. His work at Temple focused on program evaluation and research on various aspects of addiction and addiction treatment, and he was supported by funding from NIDA, NIAAA, CSAT, and other federal and state agencies in developing and evaluating interventions for individuals with substance use disorders, focusing particularly on assessing the effectiveness of treatment services and factors related to treatment completion and retention, racial and ethnic disparities in addiction treatment, and most recently, on examining the use of peer recovery support specialists to improve treatment engagement for persons under community supervision.
In addition to joining the Gaudenzia Board of Directors in 2023, Dr. Stahler is an elected member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and serves as a member of the board of directors of Prevention Point Philadelphia. He has also served as a member of the Mayor’s Task Force to Combat the Opioid Epidemic in Philadelphia and has taught courses for 20 years about addiction to both college students and incarcerated individuals in various prisons as part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
Prior to his faculty position, he was a private practice clinical psychologist and later served as Associate Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies at Temple University. Dr. Stahler attended Clark University for his undergraduate studies, earned his M.A. degree in geography from the University of Toronto, and completed an additional Master’s degree and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Temple University, and was a clinical fellow in Harvard University’s Department of Psychiatry.
Why I Serve at Gaudenzia:
“I am thrilled and deeply honored to be serving on the Board of Directors of Gaudenzia, Inc. I have always been a great admirer of Gaudenzia and the dedicated people who work there, and I have personally seen up close the kindness, dedication, and generosity of the staff at Gaudenzia. I am an old friend of Gaudenzia who has been involved with this wonderful organization in a variety of ways for several decades, so I am extremely excited to be serving on the Board of this outstanding organization.”