Robert Saltz, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist at the Prevention Research Center within the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) in Berkeley, California. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts. His research explores ways in which drinking context may influence the risk of subsequent injury or death. He has extensive experience researching “responsible beverage service” programs aimed at having bar and restaurant personnel intervene with patrons to reduce the risk of intoxication or driving while impaired.

Dr. Saltz collaborated with Dr. W. Gill Woodall and Dr. David Buller from Klein Buendel on the development, evaluation, and commercialization of the WayToServe^® responsible beverage service training program in English (AA014982; W. Gill Woodall, Principal Investigator) and Spanish (MD010405; Dr. W. Gill Woodall, Principal Investigator), and the TrainToTend^® responsible cannabis vendor training program (DA038933; Dr. David Buller, Principal Investigator).

Currently, Dr. Saltz is working with Dr. Buller and Dr. Woodall on two research projects. One is a PIRE project to assess the impact of California’s new mandatory responsible beverage service (RBS) training law intended to prevent alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes and other harms. The research is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Dr. Robert Saltz, Principal Investigator). The study is examining whether there is a significant reduction in single nighttime motor vehicle injury crashes after implementation of the mandatory responsible beverage service training law, controlling for other factors in California that may influence this outcome, and the national trend in fatal alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes. The training program that will be implemented is the WayToServe® online RBS training program developed and evaluated by PIRE, Klein Buendel, and the University of New Mexico.

The other is a Klein Buendel project developing and testing an in-service professional development component for alcohol servers trained by WayToServe to enhance its effectiveness. WayToServe Plus is intended to motivate servers to implement the responsible beverage service skills in the face of common barriers, provide support for responsible beverage service actions from a “community” of alcohol servers, and prevent natural degradation of skills over time. The in-service training is delivered through the WayToServe Facebook page that currently is followed by over 20,000 alcohol servers trained by WayToServe. This project is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA029364; Dr. W. Gill Woodall and Dr. David Buller, Multiple Principal Investigators).

In addition to his research, Dr. Saltz has served as a subject expert for the Surgeon General’s Workshop on Drunk Driving, the NIAAA’s Taskforce on College Drinking, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention.