PHI Spotlight: Meet Dr. Priscilla Martinez, Alcohol Researcher & Scientist

Drinking alcohol is woven into the fabric of many our lives, and yet mounting evidence shows it also causes real harms. How do we balance the tension between alcohol’s cultural, historical, and social importance as part of our traditions and rituals, with the real impacts it has on our health and well-being?

That has been the driving question behind Dr. Priscilla Martinez’s career. She serves as Deputy Scientific Director at PHI’s Alcohol Research Group, where she examines relationships between alcohol and drug use, physiological functioning, and common physical and mental health outcomes to understand and reduce alcohol-related racial and ethnic health disparities in the US. She also investigates levels of awareness of alcohol’s health harms and health messaging to improve awareness of these harms. She co-directs the Center’s National Alcohol Surveys: Advancing Epidemiologic Analyses of 21st Century Drinking project. She is also the Principal Investigator of a NIAAA R01 award to study alcohol use and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Studying alcohol use and how it affects health across different communities is very personal to me,” explains Martinez, “as my mother struggled for most of her life with a severe alcohol use disorder, and I witnessed the deterioration of her health as a result.”

In 2020, she received funding from the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) to lead the Drink Less for Your Breasts project, the first US-based campaign to inform young women that alcohol use is a risk factor for breast cancer. The project used focus groups and insights from young women to develop campaign materials and reached over 350,000 people on social media.

Learn more about Priscilla Martinez, MPhil, PhD →