Scott Nolen is the director of the Addiction and Health Equity program at the Open Society Institute–Baltimore.
Nolen has held a variety of research, legislative, and advocacy positions in the public health and juvenile and criminal justice fields. Before joining the Open Society Institute–Baltimore, he worked as a health scientist at the National Institutes of Health. As a part of the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, Nolen led a project focused on driving the national discussion on health disparities. Prior to that, Nolen was the director of the Equal Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which allowed Nolen to act as a health care and criminal justice advocate who could combine his legal training with his background in social science research to address issues of racial and social equity.
From 2008 to 2009, Nolen served as a Congressional fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science working on health care reform in the Office of Senator Olympia J. Snowe. As a child psychology fellow for the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Nolen conducted and published research on mental health and juvenile justice issues and led probation officer training on identifying suicidal youth. He also worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital Adolescent Medicine Clinic, where he provided mental health services to youth in schools, emergency rooms, and outpatient clinics.
Nolen holds a law degree from Harvard and a PhD in clinical psychology from Duke University and has taught numerous classes on diversity, health and criminal justice.
