David Howard Sinkman was a project director with the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the O’Neill Institute.
His work focuses on addressing the opioid epidemic by removing discriminatory barriers to treatment access in the criminal justice and health systems.
Prior to joining the O’Neill Institute, Sinkman served as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana, where he was the office’s opioid coordinator and the civil rights coordinator. He is the co-founder of Bounce Back Louisiana, which partners with thirty-five churches in Louisiana to reduce overdose deaths by distributing overdose reversal medicine and fentanyl test strips and through access to addiction treatment services. He is also a visiting scholar at the New York University School of Global Public Health and a senior fellow at the Northeastern University School of Law.
He previously clerked for the Hon. Denny Chin on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; the Hon. Richard Owen on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; and Justice Dorit Beinisch, the president of the Supreme Court of Israel.
Sinkman received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. from the University of Michigan.