Grace Chang, MD

Dr. Grace Chang is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  She has had a longstanding clinical research interest in substance use during pregnancy.  Her work in this field began while she was a junior faculty member at the Yale University School of Medicine and created a program for pregnant women dependent on opiates that sought to reduce every possible barrier to their treatment.

In 1991, Dr. Chang joined the faculty at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA.  With the strong encouragement of the Chair of Psychiatry, Dr. Jonathan Borus, Dr. Chang worked to improve the identification of risk drinking during pregnancy, and to conduct the first large clinical trials of brief intervention to modify prenatal alcohol exposure.  Her co-investigator was Dr. Louise Wilkins-Haug, an obstetrician, and their research with pregnant women was supported by Dr. Robert Barbieri who is the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the hospital.  In addition to the larger goals of effective identification and intervention, the research team examined other aspects of prenatal drinking, including readiness to change, the influence of drinking goals on consumption, and the contribution of the pregnant woman’s partner on her behavior.  Their research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.