Taleed El-Sabawi is a scholar with the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the O’Neill Institute. Her area of expertise is in addiction and mental health policy, politics, and law.
El-Sabawi has studied and written extensively on legislative decision-making, interest group mobilization, and narrative discourse surrounding opioid overdose deaths; addiction policy history, specifically as it relates to the regulation of potentially habit-forming substances; and substance use disorder treatment financing parity. Recently, she co-authored a model law that creates non-police behavioral health crisis response teams and has been assisting grassroots advocacy groups in developing narrative strategies to garner political support for the reform of institutions that perpetuate racial violence. El-Sabawi is a member of the Actional Advisory Circle of the North Carolina Urban Survivors Union, a chapter of the Urban Survivors Union, and frequently works alongside persons who use drugs advocating for policy reform. She is also an assistant professor of law at Florida International University, College of Law.
El-Sabawi holds a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law and a Ph.D. in public health and health services management and policy, with a doctoral cognate in political science from the Ohio State University.
