Emeritus Professor in Social Science in Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis.

Her research has centered on:

1. Follow-ups into adulthood of children seen in a child guidance clinic and selected from the general population of school children;
2. Follow-up after their return to the U.S. of Vietnam veterans serving during the period of heaviest heroin use among enlisted men in Vietnam;
3. Studies of psychiatric disorder in general adult populations, using diagnostic interviews that she designed for the National Institute of Mental Health and the World Health Organization. 

In each of her studies she played particular attention to the predictors of substance abuse, and to substance abuse as a predictor of treatment, unemployment, suicide attempts, criminality, marital instability, and death.  She is the author or editor of 6 books concerned with substance abuse, and has written more than 75 papers specifically on substance abuse (out of a total of 268.) 

Her research was continuously supported by NIH grants for more than 40 years.  She has been an Expert Advisor to WHO for 25 years.  She has carried out projects for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation synthesizing existing research on substance abuse and recommending future areas of substance abuse for its support. 

She has received the National Institute of Drug Abuse Pacesetter Research Award, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence Nathan B. Eddy Award, the American Society of Addiction Medicine R. Brinkley Smithers Distinguished Scientist Award, and the American Public Health Association’s Alcohol, Tobacco, and other Drugs Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award.  She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.