Beth Ann Griffin

Beth Ann Griffin
Senior Statistician
Washington Office

Education

Ph.D. in biostatistics, Harvard University; S.M. in biostatistics, Harvard University; B.A. in mathematics, University of Pennsylvania

Media Resources

This researcher is available for interviews.

To arrange an interview, contact the RAND Office of Media Relations at (310) 451-6913, or email media@rand.org.

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Overview

Beth Ann Griffin is a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation and codirector the NIDA-funded RAND/USC Opioid Policy Tools and Information Center (OPTIC) whose goal is to foster innovative research, tools, and methods for tackling the opioid epidemic. Her statistical research has focused on methods for estimating causal effects using observational data. Her public health research has primarily fallen into three areas: (1) the effects of gun and opioid state policies on outcomes, (2) substance use treatment evaluations for adolescents, and (3) the impact of nongenetic factors on Huntington's disease.

She codirected the RAND Center for Causal Inference between 2013 and 2018. She has served as the principal investigator on four grants sponsored by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the latest two devoted to developing new tools and methods to understand causal mediation and moderation and assess the sensitivity of effect estimates to omitted variables (www.rand.org/statistics/twang), and well-operationalized, empirically-supported sequences of decision rules—known as “Adaptive Interventions” (AIs)—to provide guidance about substance-use services decisions for adolescent clients.

Griffin's research has appeared in leading journals such as Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Statistics in Medicine, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Annals of Applied Statistics, Journal of Causal Inference, and American Journal of Public Health. Griffin also serves on the editorial board of the Annals of Applied Statistics. She received her Ph.D. in biostatistics from Harvard University.

Previous Positions

Codirector of RAND Center for Causal Inference

Recent Projects

  • Gun Policy in America: A RAND Initiative
  • Developing methodological tools for evaluating opioid state policies
  • Identifying effective adaptive interventions for adolescent substance users
  • Examining impact of non-genetic factors on Huntington’s disease progression

Selected Publications

Griffin, B.A., Schuler, M.S., Stuart, E.A., Patrick, S., McNeer, E., Smart, R., Powell, D., Stein, B.D., Schell, T.L., Pacula, R.L. , Moving beyond the classic difference-in-differences model: a simulation study comparing statistical methods for estimating effectiveness of state-level policies, BMC Medical Research Methodology., 2021

Griffin, B. A., Booth, M. S., Busse, M., Wild, E. J., Setodji, C., Warner, J. H., Sampaio, C., Mohan, A. , Estimating the casual effects of modifiable, non-genetic factors on Huntington disease progression using propensity score weighting, Parkinsonism and Related Disorders 83: 56-62. , 2021

15.Schell, T.L., Cefalu, M., Griffin, B. A., Smart, R., & Morral, A.R. , Changes in firearm mortality following the implementation of state laws regulating firearm access and use., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(26), 14906-14910. , 2020

Griffin, BA, Ramchand, R, Almirall, D, Slaughter, ME, Burgette, LF, McCaffrey, D, "Estimating the causal effects of cumulative treatment episodes for adolescents using marginal structural models and inverse probability of treatment weighting," Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 136(1), 2014

Grant, S, Pedersen, E, Agneil, D, Almirall, D, Burkhart, Q, Hunter, S, McCaffrey, DF, Ramchand, R, Griffin, BA, "Developing adaptive interventions for adolescent substance use treatment settings: protocol of an observational, mixed-methods project," Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 12(1), 2017

Griffin, BA, Ayer, L, Pane, J, Vegetabile, BG, Burgette, LF, McCaffrey, DM, Coffman, DL, Cefalu, M, Funk, R, Godley, M, "Expanding outcomes when considering the relative effectiveness of two evidence-based outpatient treatment programs for adolescent," Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 118, 2020

McCaffrey, DF, Griffin, BA, Almirall, D, Slaughter, ME, Ramchand, R, Burgette, LF, "A tutorial on propensity score estimation for multiple treatments using generalized boosted models," Statistics in Medicine, 32(19), 2013

Sanchez, R., Griffin, B.A., McCafferty, D.M., Best Practices in Statistical Computing, Statistics in Medicine, 2021

Honors & Awards

  • RAND Innovation Award 2021
  • RAND Bronze Medal Award for Innovation 2022
  • Fellow of the American Statistical Association

Languages

English

Publications