PRESS RELEASE
Dr. Lori Holleran Steiker receives RecoveryPeople’s 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award
In recognition of her life’s work promoting recovery, RecoveryPeople is excited to announce Dr. Lori Holleran Steiker as the recipient of our 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is part of a RecoveryPeople campaign during National Recovery Month (September) that recognizes leaders in the recovery community.
Dr. Lori Holleran Steiker is a person in long term recovery since 1987 and being of service has been her greatest joy and pursuit. She has worked and researched in the area of substance use, misuse and addictions among youth and emerging adults in both prevention and intervention realms since 1989.
Holleran Steiker served as a research associate and contributed to the Drug Resistance Strategies Minority Project, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She has worked extensively as a faculty liaison with the UT Center for Students in Recovery since its inception in 2004 and aided in the groundbreaking 2012 UT Systemwide expansion to all UT campuses. In 2014, she founded University High School, Central Texas’ first recovery high school, and extended her research to this intervention.
She began her work in the area of Opioid Response in 2015 partnering with community agencies and the UT School of Pharmacy creating Operation Naloxone, a model campus opioid response initiative. This partnership led to a $3 million Texas Targeted Opioid Response Grant (PI Hill; Co-PI, Holleran Steiker) with follow-up State Opioid Response grants which continue to date. She served as the initial Board Chair of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance and on the University High School Executive Board as well. This past year, she was one of 14 individuals appointed to the Texas Opioid Abatement Fund Council, formed ensuring that money recovered through the joint efforts of the state and its political subdivisions through a statewide opioid pharmaceutical settlement agreement is allocated fairly and effectively.
Dr. Holleran Steiker was the Director of the Youth and Emerging Adult Substance Use, Misuse and Recovery Pop-Up Institute (https://sites.utexas.edu/youthsubstancemisuse/) funded by the UT VP of Research. She authored Youth and Substance Use: Prevention, Intervention and Recovery (2016) and has close to 100 peer reviewed publications.
In 2018, Dr. Holleran Steiker was promoted to Associate Dean & Director of Instruction, Engagement and Wellness in UT’s Undergraduate College. In this role, she partnered with UT Student Affairs, helping to envision and initiate the SHIFT initiative to engage the whole community in dialogue that changes the culture of campus substance use from one of misuse to one of well-being (https://shift.utexas.edu). She serves on the Executive Leadership Team for SHIFT and is devoted to engaging and educating numerous faculty members and students and community members about youth with SUD, their families, challenges and recovery solutions.
Dr. Holleran Steiker holds the Steve Hicks Professorship of Addictions, Recovery and Substance Abuse Services where she started and began chairing the UT Opioid Response Consortium (UTORC). She has also been appointed as the Associate Director for Education and Instruction of the UT Steve Hicks School of Social Work’s Addictions Research Institute.
Dr. Holleran Steiker has received numerous teaching, research and service awards locally, statewide, and nationally. She continues to teach her “Young People and Drugs” Signature Course to first-year UT students and it is in high demand every semester. Her love of recovery is palpable and her enthusiasm contagious.
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