NJPN Annual Addiction Conference 2022

AaronWhite, Ph.D Chief of the Epidemiology and Biometry Branch. Senior Scientific Advisor to the NIAAA Director

Dr. AaronWhite is a Biological Psychologist (Neuroscientist) in the Office of the Director at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), where he serves as Senior Scientific Advisor to the Director. Dr. White received his PhD fromMiami University (Ohio) in 1999. His graduate research focused on brain mechanisms underlying alcohol-induced amnesia (i.e., “blackouts”). In 2001, After completing a two year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center Aaron was appointed to the faculty as an Assistant Professor. His research there focused on the effects of alcohol on adolescent brain function and development, alcohol-induced blackouts in college students, and adolescent substance abuse treatment. During that time, Aaron was fortunate to help create an online science focused alcohol education course for college students, called AlcoholEdu, which has been completed by more than 2,000,000 students. In 2008, I began my position at NIAAA, where I remain interested in adolescent development, the influence of alcohol and other drugs on it, and strategies for promoting adolescent health. Over the years, he has appeared in dozens of educational videos, documentaries and news stories, delivered hundreds of presentations and published 50+ scientific articles and book chapters, mostly related to excessive alcohol use and its impact on adolescent brain function and behavior. Dr. White published two books on adolescent development, one focused on research in psychology and the other on findings from brain science, and a third on the immune system and disease (recently translated into Chinese). Recent manuscripts examined hospitalizations for alcohol and drug overdoses among teens and young adults in the United States, trends in suicide-related drug poisonings and co-occurring alcohol overdoses, research on the consequences of excessive drinking for young adults and trends in drinking by females relative to males in the United States.

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