Emmert Roberts Senior Clinical Lecturer

About me

Emmert Roberts is a 2022–23 UK Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. 

Emmert is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Addiction Psychiatry at the National Addiction Centre, King’s College London (KCL) and a Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist at the South London and the Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust.

He graduated with distinctions in Medicine (BMBCh) from the University of Oxford, and Epidemiology (MSc) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He holds a PhD in Addiction Sciences from KCL, his thesis exploring how specialist drug and alcohol treatment provision in England impacts on hospitalisation and mortality. He is currently a National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NIHR) Advanced Fellow and holds membership at both the Royal College of Physicians and Psychiatrists.

He has a strong interest in substance use and the delivery of mental and behavioural health treatment to marginalised and vulnerable populations. During the COVID-19 outbreak he founded and ran the Homeless Hotel Drug and Alcohol Service (HDAS) the first pan-London service to provide drug, alcohol and tobacco support to the population of people experiencing rough sleeping who were temporarily housed in emergency accommodation across the capital.

During his fellowship Emmert was based at Stanford University and mentored by Professor Keith Humphreys, Esther Ting Memorial Professor at Stanford School of Medicine. His research project “Drug-related deaths among housed and homeless individuals in the United Kingdom and the United States” utilised ten years of coronial and medical examiner records to determine any similarities or differences in drug-related deaths in housed and homeless populations through exploration of post-mortem toxicology results.

Both the US and the UK currently report their highest number of drug-related deaths since records began and research from both countries consistently demonstrates disproportionate drug-related harms among marginalised populations. Individuals experiencing homelessness often face significant barriers to accessing appropriate mental and behavioural health support, and the project aimed to further understanding of how harms associated with drug use are differentially experienced within this population, reduce health inequities and prevent drug-related deaths among this highly vulnerable group.

A number of publications form his Harkness year can be found freely available online:

Roberts E et al. Drug-related deaths among housed and homeless individuals in the UK and the USA: comparative retrospective cohort study

British Journal of Psychiatry  https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2023.111

Roberts E & Humphreys K. ‘Safe Supply’ initiatives: Are they a recipe for harm through reduced healthcare input and supply induced toxicity and overdose?

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs https://dx.doi.org/10.15288/jsad.23-00054

Roberts E & Humphreys K. Does the advent of depot therapy represent a step change in our understanding of opioid agonist treatment?

Drug and Alcohol Review https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13732