ARG is governed by an executive committee comprised of senior scientists, the scientific director, administrative services manager, and three other elected staff who serve as at-large members for three years. The scientific director is appointed by the committee to serve a renewable two-year term. Members represent the breadth of research interests, administrative knowledge and leadership experience necessary to ensure the mission, strategic direction and goals of the organization are met. All staff are encouraged to participate on a variety of subcommittees that advise the executive committee.
Members
Thomas K. Greenfield, PhD, is the Scientific Director, Chair of the Executive Committee and Senior Scientist. He also co-directs the National Alcohol Survey (NAS) Resources Core with Katherine Karriker-Jaffe. In addition, Greenfield serves as a clinical faculty member of the clinical services research training program at the University of California San Francisco’s department of psychiatry. Greenfield received his PhD in clinical psychology from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He conducted research for eight years at Washington State University, and then served as Associate Director for Research at the Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems before coming to ARG. He has served as vice president and secretary of the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Study of Alcohol. For NIAAA he served on the Initial Review Group on Health Services Research (AA2) and served on the Extramural Advisory Board. In November 2008 he received the ATOD Section of the American Public Health Association’s Leadership Award, and also serves on the Governing Council of APHA. With regard to research, he oversees the Center’s 5-year National Alcohol Surveys (NAS) and serves as Principal Investigator for several grants associated with the NAS. Greenfield’s other research interests include: the epidemiology of alcohol use and problems, alcohol policy studies, consumer satisfaction, drinking patterns and mortality, and services research.
Cheryl J. Cherpitel, Dr.PH, Senior Scientist at ARG, an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, and Director of the World Health Organization Collaboration Centre on Alcohol Epidemiology and Injury. Between November 2004 and 2008 she served on NIAAA’s National Advisory Council. In addition, she has served as a consultant for the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, and the Pan American Health Organization. She has also served on the Initial Review Group of the NIAAA’s Clinical and Treatment Subcommittee. Dr. Cherpitel’s research areas of interest include: alcohol-related casualties and violence-related injuries in emergency room (ER) populations internationally; the validity of self-reported alcohol consumption based on breathalyzer readings in the ER; and screening for alcohol problems in health care settings and in the general population. Cherpitel holds a bachelor’s in nursing from the University of California at San Francisco and a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
Debbie Gill is the Manager of Administrative Services and has worked at ARG since 2000. She is the administrative liaison to ARG’s parent organization, the Public Health Institute. She is responsible for direct oversight of the ARG Front Office, Library and IT departments, manages facility operations, and site HR functions. She is a member of ARG’s Executive, Policy and Space committees. Debbie’s previous experience included working in administrative support positions in elementary and college institutions. She worked for the Contra Costa Community College District in the San Francisco Bay Area for 6 years from 1980-1986. Prior to starting her work at ARG she worked 12 years for the Santa Rita Union School District in Monterey County. She was executive assistant to both the District and Assistant Superintendents.
William Kerr, PhD, is a Senior Scientist and Director of ARG’s National Alcohol Research Center. Dr. Kerr received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California-Davis (1997). From 1997 to 2001 Dr. Kerr served as the Project Director of the Collaborative Alcohol Related Longitudinal Project in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at UCSF before joining ARG. He is recognized for his studies of alcohol measurement methods, age-period-cohort studies on drinking pattern trends, and mortality studies. He conducted detailed studies of home and bar drinks in the 2006-10 Center’s Methodological Studies Component and is leading analyses on trends, subjective impairment, injury risk and other topics in the current Center’s Epidemiological Analyses of the NAS component. He is currently the PI of multiple NIH funded R01 grants including a study of the privatization of the Washington state liquor monopoly in 2012, which will also investigate the impacts of marijuana legalization, and a study of life-course alcohol use patterns and health outcomes, which builds on his program of alcohol-related health outcome studies emphasizing the importance of detailed alcohol pattern measurement. He also is a collaborator on a number of other grants including a study examining the impact of the 2008-9 recession on alcohol-related suicides and disparities in such effects. Dr. Kerr is an Assistant Editor of Addiction, serves on the editorial board of Contemporary Drug Problems and on the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) Public Health Advisory Board.
Priscilla Martinez, PhD, Scientist, co-directs the Center’s National Alcohol Surveys: Advancing Epidemiologic Analyses of 21st Century Drinking project. She is also the Principal Investigator of a NIAAA K01 award investigating racial/ethnic disparities in alcohol-related conditions of depression, hypertension, and diabetes via the role of inflammation. She received funding from the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) to lead the Drink Less for Your Breasts project, the first US-based campaign to inform young women that alcohol use is a risk factor for breast cancer. As a lecturer at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley she has taught survey research methods and has conducted methodological work focused on survey data collection among racial/ethnic communities. Dr. Martinez’s research explores relationships between immune function, health, and alcohol use to address alcohol-related health disparities in the US. Her work also examines ways to improve participation of racial/ethnic minorities in alcohol research collecting biological samples. She received her MPhil in International Community Health and a Ph.D. in Addiction Research, both from the University of Oslo, Norway. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley in partnership with the Alcohol Research Group.
Nina Mulia, DrPH, Senior Scientist, is Center Associate Director and Director of Alcohol Services. She specializes in and has published widely on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in heavy drinking, alcohol problems, and alcohol services utilization. She has been PI of four NIAAA grants investigating alcohol-related disparities, and involving analyses of large national data sets such as the NAS, NESARC and NLSY. These include her current study of heavy drinking over the life course from adolescence to middle age (R01 AA022668), a study to explain racial/ethnic disparities in heavy drinking and alcohol problems that examines multilevel risk and protective factors (R01 AA020474, M-PI with S. Zemore), a study of disparities in access to alcohol services, and an early study examining race/ethnicity, social stressors such as poverty and discrimination, and alcohol use and problems (R21 AA015397).
Deidre Patterson, MPH, MSS is an associate scientist at the Alcohol Research Group. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Brooklyn College (CUNY), an MPH in Community Health from Hunter College (CUNY), and a MSS from Johns Hopkins in Spatial Analysis. She works on diverse topics including economic conditions and alcohol problems and alcohol-related problem and consumption measurement. Other research interests include ethnic variation in drinking behavior, disparities in alcohol behaviors and treatment, as well as cultural and community effects on alcohol drinking patterns. Prior to joining ARG, Deidre worked at the Cancer Prevention Institute supporting research on life exposures, pubertal development, and cancer risk in adulthood and at Cancer Care (New York), working as a research assistant on studies looking at side effects of cancer treatment, as well as social networks and support systems for patients.
Jose Reyes is a technology specialist who has been supporting ARG’s network infrastructure since 2007. He is a committed IT member who enjoys providing strong customer-service support to staff and collaborators, and making sure all systems are operational and services are readily available.
Meenakshi Sabina Subbaraman, PhD, is a member of ARG’s biostatistics core. Her primary research interests are methods for determining mechanisms of action, the intersection of cannabis and alcohol co-use, and treatment for alcohol use disorders. She has contributed to dozens of NIAAA-funded studies, and currently acts as Biostatistician on several projects related to cannabis and alcohol policies. Dr. Subbaraman is also the primary investigator of an NIAAA-funded study aiming to examine how cannabis use affects alcohol treatment outcomes. She completed her MS in statistics at Stanford University, PhD in epidemiology at UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral studies at both UC Berkeley and Brown University. Dr. Subbaraman received the first-ever “Methodological Advances from the Next Generation of Epidemiologists” award from Society for Epidemiologic Research for her dissertation work.
Sarah E. Zemore, PhD, is Associate Director, Co-Director of Training, and Senior Scientist. She is Dual Principal Investigator of the NIAAA Training Grant “Graduate Research Training on Alcohol Problems” at the School of Public Health, University of California (UC) Berkeley, as well as Associate Adjunct Professor in the same department at UC Berkeley, where she teaches. She currently serves on the Initial Review Group on Epidemiology, Prevention, & Behavior Research (AA-2) at NIAAA, and was a recipient of an NIAAA Loan Repayment Award. Dr. Zemore has led and collaborated on several large NIAAA-funded grants addressing her research interests, which concern 1) health disparities (and especially race/ethnicity, socioeconomic stress, and gender in relation to alcohol use, problems, and treatment) and 2) treatment seeking and efficacy (with a focus on mutual help groups and peer helping). She has been particularly active in mentorship and training at ARG. Dr. Zemore received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
