Laura Cooley MA

Laura Cooley is a public health specialist who joined the Northwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center at ADAI in 2017 as a Technology Transfer Specialist. She acts as the primary point of contact for the Northwest ATTC’s behavioral health workforce training and technical assistance in Alaska and Washington State. Her work involves initiating, managing, and strengthening training and intensive technical assistance for a variety of partners, including health care authorities, agency leaders and their staff, peers, and community health workers. Training topics have included: Trauma-Informed Care & Practice, organizational/process improvement, harm reduction, and efforts to support the behavioral health workforce, among other topics.

Laura first joined the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in 2010. She researched patient perspectives about opioid use before transitioning to co-directing a continuing medical education program about treating chronic non-cancer pain. Her background includes an extensive career implementing regional and global health programs for the World Bank. She worked for four years on the successful river blindness control program in West Africa, on global initiatives such as GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance) and served as a Health Specialist for the World Bank’s Global HIV/AIDS Program. Other work experience includes promoting new vaccine development and uptake in Asia and Africa for the international nonprofit PATH. Laura previously served as a Research Associate for Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of Essex, UK, in addition to holding research positions with the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars in Washington DC. Laura has also consulted for the Center for Global Development, UW’s I-TECH, and other organizations.