Ms. Rebecca Hurd (she/her/hers) is the Senior Community Coordinator for the Empowered Communities Opioid Project serving the Hub and five ECOP Spoke sites across the state. Hurd initially joined the project as a Graduate Research Assistant in 2022 while working to obtain her MPH before taking on the role of Senior Community Coordinator in October 2023. Hurd provides direct supervision to spoke site Coordinators, facilitates relationships with community partners, monitors for data fidelity, and assists with training staff in data collection improvements. Hurd is the direct point of contact in troubleshooting ECOP spoke site issues and works to provide continuous quality improvement to research practices and social determinants of health needs identified by Peer Navigators.

Hurd brings extensive experience in public health harm reduction and direct service in addition to her epidemiology lens. Prior to joining ECOP, she served as Interim Mobile Services Coordinator at HIPS needle exchange in Washington, DC, where she remains an active Team Lead, taking several mobile outreach shifts in the community each month. She worked as the CHARLII health educator for the Inova Juniper Program, providing rapid HIV testing and harm reduction classes in five northern Virginia jails, before becoming a case manager at Shelter House and serving chronically unhoused folks at the quarantine prevention shelter during the height of the COVID health emergency. When not devising new quality improvement methods for ECOP, she can be found competing in or teaching children Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.