Dwight Heath, PhD

Dr. Heath is a noted anthropologist with a broad experience and knowledge related to the social aspects of alcohol consumption.  He is in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.

Dwight Heath has specialized in studying alcohol consumption, patterns and problems across different cultures, but particularly in Latin America and amongst North American Indians.  He was consultant to the World Health Organization in the 1970’s for Chile, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Yugoslavia, and studied the feasibility of training primary health-care workers to recognize and deal with alcohol-related problems and to look at community responses to such problems in these countries.

Dr. Heath has a particular interest relating to alcohol, culture and history.  In 1995 he published an ‘International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture,’ which has been translated into many languages.  Other publications include: ‘Alcohol and World Cultures’ and ‘Cross-Cultural Approaches to the Study of Alcohol: an Interdisciplinary Perspective.’  Dr. Heath has also tackled the politically sensitive areas of control policies and the balance of politics versus science.  His most recent book is ‘Drinking Occasions: Comparative Perspectives on Alcohol and Culture,’ in which he has striven to describe who drinks, what, where, when, how, and why — as well as what they and other people feel about it — around the world and throughout history.