Eric C. Brown, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the University of Miami’s Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine, where he is the Director of the PhD program in Prevention Science and Community Health and Principal Investigator of the Prevention Education and Research in Latin America (PERLA) group, which focuses on the adaptation, dissemination, and implementation of preventive interventions for youth alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use in Latinx and Caribbean youth populations. Dr. Brown’s specific interests center around the application of advanced research methods to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of prevention programs, strategies, and systems in the region.
Dr. Brown’s portfolio of current research studies includes a large-scale place-based youth alcohol prevention project in Zacatecas, Mexico, called Businesses That Care; the development of a registry of all preventive interventions for youth ATOD use in Latin America and the Caribbean; a multisite study of alcohol misuse and mental health problems in Puerto Rican families displaced by Hurricane Maria; and a comparison of risk and protective factors between youth and their parents in Colombia and the United States; and the adaptation and implementation of the Communities That Care prevention system in Brazil.
Dr. Brown serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) and is a member of the SPR Training Committee and liaison to the SPR International committee. Additionally, he is a member of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals, International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction the Prevention Science Methodology Group, the Brazilian Association for Research in Prevention and Health Promotion, and the National Hispanic Science. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Society for Prevention Research International Collaboration Award. He currently teaches Introduction to Implementation and Dissemination Science, Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and Advanced Research Methods in the University of Miami’s Department of Public Health Sciences graduate programs.