Richard Saitz, a School of Public Health professor of community health sciences and a School of Medicine professor of medicine, is being remembered by friends and colleagues for his dedication and scholarship as well as his sense of humor and “his unwavering humility.” Photo courtesy of BU School Public Health

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School of Public Health Professor Richard Saitz Remembered for Dedication, Scholarship, Sense of Humor

Substance use disorder expert helped advance field of addiction research 

Richard Saitz, whose decades of research into the root causes and debilitating effects of substance use disorder helped advance the field of addiction medicine, died January 15, 2022, after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 58.

Saitz (CAS’87, MED’87), a School of Public Health professor and chair of community health sciences and a School of Medicine professor of medicine, “leaves behind a legacy of excellence in scholarship, teaching, and practice,” says Sandro Galea, dean of SPH and Robert A. Knox Professor. “Rich ultimately was a friend and a deeply cherished member of this community.”

Renowned for his dedication to addiction research and for being a committed patient advocate, Saitz took on a third love over the past eight years, says Lois McCloskey, an SPH associate professor and interim chair of community health sciences—leading a department. “At the height of his international research career, doctoring, and being a rigorous manager, Rich had the idea that he step up and teach a course on substance and alcohol use as a public health issue. He was great at it and kept getting better. 

“Rich was never afraid to jump into whatever deep end there was, with rigor and joy in the swim.” 

Both Boston University and the city of Boston held undeniably prominent places in his life. Saitz graduated from BU’s accelerated six-year medical program, trained at Boston City Hospital—now Boston Medical Center—as a primary care/internal medicine resident and was selected as a chief resident. There, his life’s work was shaped by the patients he saw, many of whom were living—and dying—with the consequences of alcoholism. As he told the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA) in 2012, he “learned how to take care of those medical conditions, but not their cause.”

His dogged curiosity about improving the health of populations led him to earn a master’s in public health at the Harvard University School of Public Health, but he was immediately drawn back to BU, says Kate Walsh, president and CEO of the Boston Medical Center Health System.

 “We were fortunate to recruit him back to our internal medicine department after a fellowship in which he had begun to establish himself as a provocative evidence-based voice and researcher on alcohol use disorder,” Walsh says.

Saitz directed BMC’s Clinical Addiction Research and Education Unit for more than a decade, and was named professor and chair of community health sciences in 2013. Along with these responsibilities, he was associate editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, and a former president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse.

Last year, he received the Educator of the Year Award from the American Society of Addiction Medicine, one of many awards over the course of his career. His boundless energy as a scholar and educator extended to his relationships with his colleagues and students.

“Rich was a bon vivant—he loved good living. He worked and ate and taught and gave of himself with full enjoyment,” says Michael Stein, an SPH professor and chair of health law, policy, and management. “My friendship with Rich goes back 25 years, and our connection very much brackets my move to Boston. Rich reached out with my first invitation to apply for a job at SPH six years ago. He helped me get in the door and once I arrived, he was my translator for how to make sense of the life of a public health school in all its complexity.”

Saitz was a sought-after speaker and author, Walsh says, but always valued his direct connection with patients and continued on the addiction consult service even during his years of responsibility as a department chair.

“He was on the forefront of ensuring that research and clinical approaches took into account the unique needs of our patient population,” she says. “His research in screening and brief intervention and integrating substance use care and general healthcare led to much needed changes in how we care for patients with substance use disorders.” 

Other colleagues appreciated his policy of ensuring that everyone on his research teams felt included. “To Rich, it did not matter if you were a new research assistant just out of college or a seasoned senior coinvestigator, he solicited and valued everyone’s opinions,” recalls Kara Magane, SPH director of research operations for community health sciences. “This leadership style created vibrant, strong, collaborative, and innovative research teams—and these teams are part of his legacy.”  

Saitz was an internationally recognized leader in the field of addiction medicine, but “had unwavering humility,” Megane says. “He was a lifelong learner, passionate about following the evidence. He cared deeply about doing what he thought was right. And he brought humor, and a laugh that I can still hear, to all of the right situations.”

“Rich committed himself to the advancement of junior colleagues, serving as a mentor to many, both in the United States and internationally,” says Karen Antman, dean of MED and provost of the Medical Campus. “His critical, thoughtful understanding of the medical literature with regard to addressing alcohol and drug addiction issues, particularly as it related to chronic medical problems, including HIV infection, set him apart as an invaluable authority in the academic community.” 

When Saitz learned of his diagnosis last year, he reached out to Stein and asked to collaborate on a National Institutes of Health grant to further study the connections between HIV and alcohol misuse. “The project, now funded, that will go on without his guidance and special insight, will be the large, final legacy to an illustrious research career, and I am proud to be part of it,” Stein says.

Throughout Saitz’s career as both an educator and a clinician, he was adamant that specialty addiction treatment programs and effective educational programs should not be considered freestanding entities separate from the current ways healthcare is delivered.

“If addiction is a health problem, and there is no question that it is, there is no justification for not treating it like one,” Saitz told the RSA in his 2012 talk. “Other health problems are treated in the healthcare system, by healthcare providers, yet addiction treatment is clearly not part of that system; however, not being a part of that system does a disservice to people with addictions and their clinicians. It keeps funding too low and maintains low status, stigma, discrimination, and facilitates more dangerous and poorer quality of care than it could or should be. Addiction specialty care should be no different than getting care for a heart condition or depression. Separate but equal is unacceptable in society; it should be unacceptable for the care of people with addictions.”

Saitz is survived by his former wife, Angela Jackson, a MED associate professor of general internal medicine and associate dean, and their two daughters, Isabella and Tatiana.

The School of Public Health will host a celebration of life for Saitz on Monday, April 4, from 3:30 to 5 pm in the Medical Campus Hiebert Lounge, 72 East Concord St. The event will be held both in person and virtually.