NDRI mourns the loss of Bruce Johnson
All of us in the community of substance use research mourn the sudden and untimely passing of Bruce Johnson, our exceptional colleague and one of the nation's leading authorities on illicit drug markets and the criminal and social consequences of drug use and sales. Bruce spent his formative years in South Dakota and earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1971. He was affiliated with the National Institute of Justice's Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program from its inception in 1987 to its close in 2003. His five books and more than 150 articles are based on findings emerging from over 20 federally funded research projects supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Justice, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Every year he wrote 12 to 20 proposals and trained less experienced Ph.D.s to write them as well.
Since 1992 Bruce had directed the Institute for Special Populations Research (ISPR) at NDRI (National Development and Research Institutes), the nation's largest nonprofit research organization focused on substance use. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, ISPR investigates the epidemiology and consequences of substance use among diverse, at-risk populations. These include marginalized groups such as the poor, the homeless, distressed households, arrestees, and persons from particular ethnic communities. Recent and current ISPR studies include analysis of changes among illegal drug users and drug markets in New Orleans and Houston following Hurricane Katrina; transient domesticity in partnering patterns among drug-using African-Americans in New York City; analysis of African-American family structures in national data sets; recruitment of African-American heterosexual men with multiple female partners as well as men who have sex with women and men; prescription opioid use, misuse, and diversion among street drug users; development of web-based training for practitioners regarding traumatic brain injury, hepatitis C, HIV confidentiality, methamphetamine use, and methadone treatment.
Bruce was also the director of Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and located at NDRI since 1984. The BST program is the largest substance abuse-focused pre- and post-doctoral training program in the United States. Fellows are recruited from a spectrum of countries and cultures and from many fields: sociology, psychology, anthropology, criminology, criminal justice, history, nursing, public health, and others. In all, Bruce nurtured the careers of more than 160 research professionals in the first 24 years of the program. He was particularly concerned with advancing the careers of women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups, and at the time of his death he was serving as an expert staff member of a coordinating center for minority fellowship programs funded by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
A champion of collaboration, Bruce maintained decades-long working relationships with several fellow researchers who profited from his intellectual and personal generosity. Many if not most of those who worked with him recall unsolicited acts of kindness along with the research advice we actively sought from him. He loved to drive, and scuba-dive, and he’d call (or e-mail) his staff from pretty much anywhere he was traveling to offer comments on a grant proposal, conference paper or journal article (and sometimes to remind them to water his plants). Bruce also loved the symphony, and the sounds of Mahler and Mozart wafting from his office were reliable signs that proposals and publications were under construction.
Bruce’s concern for the marginalized and the troubled was not merely academic. Many years ago, with other members of the church he belonged to in New York City, he helped found a community non-profit that provides healthy meals and counseling to needy individuals. The organization helps people turn their lives around through individual and group counseling, spiritual development, work readiness training and job opportunities, a women’s shelter, and art therapy.
It isn’t necessary to count the number of lives Bruce touched in order to feel the magnitude of our loss. But we also know that his contributions to social science, and especially research on substance use, are equally great and lasting.
March, 2009