Ricky Bluthenthal Email Address

Vice Chair for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Established in 1880 and located in the heart of Los Angeles, the University of Southern California (USC) is one of the world's leading private research universities, with a central College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and 17 professional schools on two campuses. The Health Sciences campus, to the northeast of downtown Los Angeles, is home to the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the School of Pharmacy, three major teaching hospitals and programs in Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, and Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy.

Ricky N. Bluthenthal, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean for Social Justice, Vice Chair for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences (formerly Preventive Medicine) in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. His major research contributions have been in the areas of HIV epidemiology and prevention for drug injectors and men who have sex with men, racial/ethnic differences in alcohol consumption, consequences, and treatment outcomes, and community approaches to health promotion. His current research (January 2022) examines whether cannabis legalization leads to changes in opioid use patterns among people who inject drugs, tests the efficacy of a single session intervention to reduce injection initiation, and uses qualitative research methods to explore opioid use patterns among sexual minority men. Dr. Bluthenthal has published over 170 studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, Addiction, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Social Science and Medicine, and Health Services Research. He received his doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998.