In Memoriam
Douglas Yale Longshore, Ph.D.
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It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Douglas
Yale Longshore,
Ph.D., an associate director and principal investigator for UCLA Integrated
Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP) and adjunct senior behavioral scientist at
RAND.
Dr. Longshore died Dec. 30, 2005, at his Santa Monica home from metastatic melanoma. He was 56.
Dr. Longshore’s research interests included interventions for drug-using criminal offenders; motivation for drug abuse treatment and recovery; racial/ethnic and cultural factors in drug abuse treatment utilization and recovery; and HIV incidence and risk behavior trends among injection drug users. He published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals.
“Doug was a highly valued and esteemed colleague among his peers at UCLA and RAND, and nationally among addiction and criminology researchers,” commented Douglas Anglin, Ph.D., also an associate director of ISAP. “He is remembered by his coworkers particularly for his keen intelligence, wry sense of humor, quiet and plainspoken manner, sense of fairness and integrity, kindness and consideration of others, and wide-ranging interests in art, literature, music, and film.”
Dr. Longshore’s most recent research endeavor was the evaluation of California’s Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000 (SACPA, also known as “Prop 36”), which gives adults arrested for nonviolent drug-related offenses the option of treatment as opposed to incarceration. He proposed an innovative yet rigorous evaluation design that required the trust and cooperation of various stakeholders across the criminal justice, judicial, governmental, and treatment systems.
The evaluation, which was largely completed by the time of his death, promises to yield cutting-edge findings on the effectiveness of this major change in criminal justice policy regarding mandated treatment for offenders. His work on SACPA and other research projects was recently honored by a proclamation issued by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dr. Longshore was born in Bryan, Texas, on June 7, 1949. He grew up in Houston and was awarded his undergraduate degree from Rice University. He completed his doctorate in sociology at UCLA in 1981.
Dr. Longshore began his career in substance abuse research in 1989, when he joined the research staff of the UCLA Drug Abuse Research Center (now UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs). At the same time he became a consultant to the World Health Organization on AIDS and HIV issues.
Dr. Longshore’s involvement in community affairs was reflected in his participation in many activities that directly benefited individuals affected by substance abuse. Notable among these activities were his membership on the Advisory Panel for the National Antidrug Media Campaign, on the Board of Directors for the New Start Counseling Center in Santa Monica, and on the Board of Directors for Surviving In Recovery, a community program in South Central Los Angeles, with which Dr. Longshore developed, implemented, and evaluated a successful treatment engagement intervention for African Americans.
He also was a member for five years of the Health Services Initial Review Group of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a position that testifies to his stature in the field. He organized and directed the national Addiction Health Services Research conference that was held in Santa Monica in October 2005.
“Doug was dedicated to his work and to advancing the field by assisting young researchers and peers to further the science of substance abuse research. His efforts have produced a better understanding of substance abuse and have resulted in improvements in the design and delivery of treatment services, especially for ethnic minority populations and those afflicted with substance abuse and HIV/AIDS,” added Dr. Anglin.
Dr. Longshore is survived by his parents, Barbara and Jim Longshore; aunt, Cilla Goss; sister, Jenni; brother, Clay; nieces, Lindsay and Lissa; nephew Tyler; and grandmother, Marguerite Goss, all of Houston, Texas; by his brother, Larry, sister-in-law, Kathy, nephew, Jeff, and niece, Allison, of Orlando, Florida; and by his aunt, Marjorie McCarthy, of Oklahoma.
