Richard Grucza

Richard Grucza is an American epidemiologist and associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine.

Grucza received his B.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1989, his M.S. from Pennsylvania State University in 1991, and his Ph. D. and Master of Psychiatric Epidemiology from Washington University in 2000 and 2003, respectively.

Grucza's research mainly focuses on genetic and environmental causes of addiction, as well as the health effects of alcohol consumption. He has also conducted research on the effects of tobacco control policies on the use of tobacco and other drugs. In 2009, he analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and found that since 1979, the proportion of college women who were drinking alcohol excessively had increased by 40%, but that overall binge drinking in the United States had decreased over that time period. In a 2014 study, he and his colleagues found that the adoption of tobacco control policies by certain U.S. states was associated with decreases in suicide rates in these states. In 2016, he led a study that found that the increase in marijuana use by American adults was less than that initially reported.

Grucza has received the Walter G. Klopfer Award from the Society for Personality Assessment for distinguished contribution to the literature in personality assessment, and was named an Outstanding Public Health Transdisciplinary Scholar by Washington University’s Institute for Public Health in 2012