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NIAAA Staff Profile

 

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Health Specialist, Treatment, Health Services, and Recovery Branch (THSRB)

Joan Romaine, M.S., M.P.H

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Joan Romaine photo

6700B Rockledge Drive
Room 1403
Bethesda, MD 20892-6902

Focus Area

Alcohol and women; Project management for public health initiatives, including with faith leader audiences in the US.

Biographical Summary

Ms. Romaine holds a Master of Public Health degree from The George Washington University with a focus on international health policy and programs. She also earned a Master of Science degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Loyola University Maryland’s Department of Pastoral Counseling in May 2020. She earned a dual BA/BS degree in psychology and advertising from Syracuse University. 

Currently, Ms. Romaine collaborates with team members in the Division of Treatment and Recovery, Health Services, and Recovery Branch (THSRB), on developments related to increasing awareness of the NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator among healthcare providers and other professional groups. She is project lead for an effort to create awareness for NIAAA’s treatment and recovery research findings among faith leaders in communities across the U.S. and developed the Faith Leader Outreach Kit. Ms. Romaine was a co-Chair for the 2022 National Conference on Alcohol and Other Substance Use in Women and Girls: Advances in Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery. Ms. Romaine was a co-creator and co-faculty of NIAAA’s FAES course “Alcohol Across the Lifespan,” a first for NIAAA, which was held in spring 2017 and 2020 (in-person and virtual) and showcased expert lecturers from NIAAA’s extramural and intramural staff. 

Ms. Romaine began at the NIH twenty-two years ago as a Presidential Management Intern (now Presidential Management Fellow’s program) working at the NIAAA in the Office of Communications, Public Liaison, and Legislation. There she worked on the launch of the award-winning NIAAA website, CollegeDrinkingPrevention.gov. Since then, she has held a number of positions related to AIDS research, starting at the International Research Branch of the Division of AIDS in NIAID, where she also served as the AIDS Coordinator. She then became the NIH Representative to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy under the Obama Administration. Next, she worked in the NIH Office of AIDS Research (OAR) on bilateral HIV/AIDS biomedical research cooperation projects. There she also supervised the Program Planning and Analysis group, which is responsible for developing the Trans-NIH Plan for HIV-Related Research and OAR’s Advisory Council. In NIAAA, Ms. Romaine has worked on HIV/AIDS and alcohol research initiatives and global health and alcohol initiatives before transferring to THSRB.

Ms. Romaine provided planning and evaluation support for the 2017 National Conference on Alcohol and Opioid Use in Women and Girls: Advances in Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery continues to serve on the Interagency Work Group on Drinking and Drug Use in Women and Girls. In 2018, she helped to shape and coordinate the Research Society of Alcoholism Roundtable, “Alcohol and Health: Essential Knowledge for Health Professions.” 

Selected Publications

Co-Rapporteur, National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s Forum on Global Violence Prevention publication, Public Policy Approaches to Violence Prevention—Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief (2018).

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