Media Relations
News Releases
For Release Upon Receipt - June 8, 2000
Contact:
Gina M. Digravio, 617-638-8491, gina.digravio@bmc.org
RICHARD SAITZ RECEIVES MILLION GRANT FROM NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
(Boston, Mass.) — Newton resident Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, was recently awarded a five year, $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Saitz, who also co-directs the Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit at Boston Medical Center, will use the grant to study the usefulness and cost effectiveness of screening and brief motivational treatment for alcohol problems in hospitalized patients.
Saitz has published extensively on the effects of alcohol and substance abuse. He has investigated the role of the primary care provider in detecting and helping patients recover from drug and alcohol problems, the management of alcohol withdrawal with pharmacological therapies, the use of acupuncture for substance abuse detoxification, and the under diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism in medical settings.In addition to this grant, Saitz is the co-principal investigator on a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. This grant helps link patients with addictions but without primary and preventative health care with primary care physicians. He is also principal investigator of a study to improve intervention in primary care settings, and co-principal investigator of an effort at Boston University School of Medicine to train physicians regarding substance abuse supported by the National Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.
Saitz has received numerous awards and honors including being named a Fellow of the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and winning the New Investigator Award from the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse.
He earned his masters of public health from Harvard University School of Public Health, and both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Boston University.
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