William A. Vega

William A. Vega is Director of Research at the Behavioral and Research Training Institute of University Behavioral HealthCare. He also holds the title of Professor of Psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School-University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey. Until last December of 2000, Dr. Vega was Professor of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now an emeritus professor of that institution. Dr. Vega received all of his academic degrees in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, with an emphasis in criminology for the doctorate.

Dr. Vega has conducted field research projects about health, mental health, and substance abuse in various regions of the United States (East and West coast) and Mexico. His studies have collected data on over 100,000 respondents, and resulted in feature articles in New England Journal of Medicine and Archives of General Psychiatry. His specialty is comparative health research, and immigrant social adaptation and menatl health adjustments that occur with adolescents and adults. Currently, Dr. Vega is addressing the "immigrant paradox:" how do impoverished, and frequently illiterate or semi-literate Hispanics achieve superior health profiles compared to native born Americans? He has published over 100 articles and chapters on those topics, in addition to several books.

Dr. Vega is a founding member of the International Consortium of Psychiatric Epidemiology, headquartered at the School of Public Health, Harvard University, and sponsored by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Most recently he was a member of the Institute of Medicine advisory group on youth risk behaviors, and U.S. Attorney General's Methamphetamine Task Force. He is currently a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Advisory Group on Drug Abuse and Tobacco Initiation and Addiction. Dr. Vega has served on numerous NIH technical committees and as a consultant to the World Health Organization for assessment of mental health problems. His research has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and various national foundations.