Tricia Christensen, MPP

Senior Consultant

Health Management Associates

Nashville, TN

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Tricia Christensen is a harm reduction and drug policy expert focused on high impact relationship building and policy change to improve quality of and access to care. She has more than a decade of wide-ranging experience including outreach, direct service, health coaching, care coordination, research, coalition building, supporting community-based organizations, and advising at the state, regional, and national level.

Prior to joining HMA, Tricia was director of policy for the Community Education Group, a nonprofit organization working to address the syndemic of HIV, viral hepatitis, and substance use throughout Appalachia. In that role, she led legislative and regulatory policy initiatives at all levels of government to reduce barriers to care. She became a national opioid settlement expert as she launched the Appalachia Opioid Remediation (AOR) project, monitoring how 13 states were managing and spending opioid settlement funds and collaborating with stakeholders across the country to promote best practice spending strategies.

While working as Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition’s policy manager, Tricia also established the Maryland Harm Reduction Action Network (MHRAN), a statewide network of harm reduction advocates. Cultivating relationships with numerous coalitions, state agencies and other stakeholders, Tricia positioned MHRAN to build influence and organize at state and local levels to improve the health, dignity and safety of people who use drugs. She developed educational materials, gathered testimony for state legislation, produced opinion editorials, and organized campaigns to emphasize health and dignity-based approaches to substance use, addiction and overdose.

A returned Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, Tricia has demonstrated success working with people from all walks of life to drive collaborative change. She works with advocates, public health professionals, law enforcement, direct service providers and legislators to produce policies, procedures, educational resources, and trainings covering a range of public health topics. She also emphasizes meaningful inclusion of people with lived and living experience of drug use, sex work, and homelessness to ensure program development and policy change are centered around those most impacted.

Tricia has helped stand up syringe access and naloxone distribution programs and provided technical assistance for community inclusion as part of local and state Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) plans. She advocates for law enforcement diversion, low-barrier access to medications for addiction treatment, authorization of overdose prevention sites, and decriminalization of drug paraphernalia possession. She also supports advancement of policies and programs that facilitate greater quality of life such as worker rights, access to nutritious foods, creating more walkable neighborhoods, and reducing trash pollution.

Tricia earned her Master of Public Policy with an emphasis in health policy from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington State University. She spends her free time with her two young children and her husband, an active-duty military social worker. She enjoys going for hikes, practicing yoga, and experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.