Dr Emaediong I. Akpanekpo

Experts / Dr Emaediong I. Akpanekpo

Dr Emaediong I. Akpanekpo

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, UNSW Sydney

Dr Emaediong Akpanekpo (MBBS, MPH in Epidemiology) is an epidemiologist specialising in health and justice research. Since completing his PhD in 2025, his work has focused on the intersection of mental illness, reoffending trajectories, and treatment interventions. His methodological expertise includes recurrent event analysis, multi-state models, psychiatric epidemiology, survival analysis, and administrative data linkage.

Dr Akpanekpo co-led the statistical analysis for the ReINVEST RCT, the first trial of sertraline to reduce recidivism in violent offenders. He has led cohort studies published in Schizophrenia Research and Psychiatric Services examining how mental health treatment affects reoffending among justice-involved youth. His population-based cohort study in Australasian Psychiatry provided evidence that incarceration is associated with the onset of new mental disorders in youth with no prior psychiatric history. His BMJ Mental Health study identified increased psychiatric admissions after expiration of justice supervision, and his Journal of Criminal Justice article was the first to use multi-state models to map criminal justice transitions dynamically. His implementation science study in Justice, Opportunities, and Rehabilitation validated youth violence risk predictions across different supervision contexts.

He has published 15+ peer-reviewed articles in journals including Lancet eClinicalMedicine, BMJ Mental Health, Schizophrenia Research, Psychiatric Services, and the Journal of Criminal Justice, leading 10 as first or co-first author. He supervises medical students and Honours and Masters students, and is a peer reviewer for Australasian Psychiatry, General Psychiatry, Trauma, Violence and Abuse, BMC Public Health, and PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is a member of the Australian & New Zealand Mental Health Association.

Common antidepressant could help tackle domestic violence, study suggests

World-first trial tested whether sertaline can reduce reoffending in impuslive men...

Common antidepressant could help tackle domestic violence, study suggests

World-first trial tested whether sertaline can reduce reoffending in impuslive men...

By Prof Tony Butler, Dr Emaediong I. Akpanekpo, Prof Peter William Schofield, Lee Knight, Rhys Mantell

Clinical Articles

Drugs and devices, Mental health