Saitz Named Senior Editor of Journal of Addiction Medicine.

Dr. Richard Saitz, chairman of BUSPH’s Community Health Sciences Department, has been named the senior editor of the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM).

Saitz, a general internist and primary care physician who is also a professor of medicine at the BU School of Medicine, will assume the leadership position Jan. 1, when the current senior editor, researcher Dr. George Koob, steps down. Koob has been appointed the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health. Saitz will join current journal co-editors Drs. Shannon Miller, Martha Wunsch and Frank Vocci.

“As a general medicine internist with leadership and expertise in addiction medicine, Dr. Saitz will tactically position ASAM’s journal amidst the Affordable Care Act, the patient-centered medical home, addiction parity, and the new national recognition of the importance of placing addiction medicine central to primary care,” said Dr. Lori D. Karan, treasurer and publications council chair for ASAM, who led the recruitment.

Saitz is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and by the American Board Addiction Medicine. He has received numerous awards for his research contributions to the field of addiction medicine, including an RSA Distinguished Researcher Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism.

His studies, supported by federal agencies and foundations, have focused on integrating care for addictions into general health settings, including identification and brief interventions in primary care.

“Journal of Addiction Medicine is well on its way as a prominent journal in the field, and Dr. Richard Saitz can continue and facilitate this trajectory,” Koob said.

ASAM President Dr. Stuart Gitlow said Saitz has “the strong medical and research background to continue the incredible growth of ASAM’s journal that we experienced with Dr. Koob’s leadership.”

Saitz, the author of over 160 peer-reviewed publications, previously served as a board member of the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors; as editor-in-chief of Alcohol, Other Drugs and Health: Current Evidence, Evidence-Based Medicine and Addiction Science & Clinical Practice; and as an editorial board member on numerous addiction and other medical journals. He also served as a leading editor of The ASAM Principles of Addiction Medicine.