Raul Caetano, MD, MPH, PhD is a psychiatrist and epidemiologist who has worked in public health for about 35 years. A native of Brazil, Dr. Caetano’s MD is from the School of Medical Sciences, State University of Rio de Janeiro. His MPH (behavioral sciences) and his PhD (epidemiology) are from the University of California at Berkeley. He was Dean of the Southwestern School of Health Professions at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center from 2006 to 2014, and Regional Dean and Professor of Epidemiology, Dallas Regional Campus, University of Texas School of Public Health from 1998 to 2014. He has been a Senior Research Scientist at the Prevention Research Center of PIRE since January 2015.
Dr. Caetano has written extensively about alcohol problems among U.S. ethnic minorities, especially among Hispanics. Other areas of research are psychiatric diagnosis and classifications, development of criteria for diagnosis of alcohol dependence, and the association between drinking and intimate partner violence. He has conducted numerous general population and clinical studies of alcohol problems among Whites, Blacks and Hispanics, and has more than 250 papers published in the peer reviewed literature. His research has been consistently supported by the NIH for over 30 years.
Dr. Caetano has also done international collaborative research with investigators in England, Argentina, Mexico, Spain and Brazil. He has served as a committee member for the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and as a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism as well as a consultant for various state and federal agencies. He has received numerous awards in recognition for his research.
In 1994 he was elected Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, and in 1999 he received a prestigious MERIT award from the NIH. More recently, in 2013, he received a Senior Investigator National Research Award, from the National Hispanic Science Network. In 2014 he received the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center President’s Research Scholar Award. In 2015 he was the recipient of the Betty Ford Award from the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA). Dr. Caetano received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism in 2016. Most recently, In 2021, Dr. Caetano received the Dora Goldstein Diversity in Sciences Award, which recognizes an individual who has demonstrated excellence and creativity in alcohol research, and a commitment to diversity and mentoring throughout his or her career.
His publications are listed on NIH’s National Library of Medicine site and on our publications page as well.
Selected Projects
Mexican American Drinking Contexts on and away from the US/Mexico Border
Environmental Drinking Contexts & Intimate Partner Violence
Development and Testing of the Fire Service Health Drinking Toolkit
Interrupting Initiation of Smokeless Tobacco Use among Rural California Firefighters
