Joseph Glass, PhD, MSW

Senior Research Scientist

Graduated Washington University in St. Louis, 2012 (Social Work), University of Michigan, 2005 (Social Work, Interpersonal Practice in Mental Health), and Michigan State University, 2004 (Psychology)

Specialty areas: methodology; measurement; latent variable modeling; mixed methods research; randomized controlled trials; implementation science; substance use disorder treatment; health care quality; digital therapeutics

Joseph Glass, PhD, MSW, is a Senior Research Scientist at Chestnut Health Systems. Dr. Glass’s research seeks to identify how effective interventions for alcohol and drug use can reach more people. Much of his work aims to develop, test, and implement modern models of care that proactively deliver novel addiction treatments and provide support to people while they seek treatment.

Dr. Glass’s work is informed by his practical experience in the field. After receiving a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, Dr. Glass was a psychiatric social worker at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System. There he developed expertise in social work case management and evidence-based treatments for anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders.

Dr. Glass completed a 5-year career development award in 2021 funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to obtain intensive training in clinical trials and implementation science. Since then, he has led 2 randomized controlled trials:

• The DIGITS Trial, which tested strategies for improving how clinicians and patients use smartphone-based treatments for substance use disorder in primary care.
• The Addressing Barriers to Care Trial (ABC-SUD), part of a national center of excellence on implementation science, is evaluating use of Care Navigators to help people engage in addiction treatment when they seek it.

To bring cutting-edge quantitative research methods to the field of addiction, Dr. Glass and his colleagues are launching a new 5-year project to compressively characterize how people interact with health systems to obtain addiction treatment. They will compare the effectiveness of the most common care pathways that people embark upon, comparing outcomes such as overdose, survival, and recovery.

He also enjoys serving as a co-investigator, consultant, and mentor, and he frequently provides clinical expertise and statistical support to his colleagues. To that end, he has joined studies led by his colleagues at Lighthouse Institute, Dr. Gracelyn Cruden and Dr. Lisa Saldana, to serve as a methodologist on their clinical research and implementation trials.

Selected Publications: 

Glass, J. E., Hamilton, A. M., Powell, B. J., Perron, B. E., Brown, R. T., & Ilgen, M. A. (2015). Specialty substance use disorder services following brief alcohol intervention: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 110(9), 1404–1415. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.12950

Matson, T. E., Hermes, E. D. A., Lyon, A. R., Quanbeck, A., Schueller, S. M., Wilson, S. M., & Glass, J. E. (2025). A framework for designing hybrid effectiveness-implementation trials for digital health interventions. Annals of Epidemiology, 104, 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2025.02.007

Glass J. E. (2015). Challenges ahead in developing and testing referral to treatment interventions. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 110(9), 1419–1420. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13039

Glass, J. E., Bohnert, K. M., & Brown, R. L. (2016). Alcohol Screening and Intervention Among United States Adults who Attend Ambulatory Healthcare. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 31(7), 739–745. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-016-3614-5

Glass, J. E., Andréasson, S., Bradley, K. A., Finn, S. W., Williams, E. C., Bakshi, A. S., Gual, A., Heather, N., Sainz, M. T., Benegal, V., & Saitz, R. (2017). Rethinking alcohol interventions in health care: a thematic meeting of the International Network on Brief Interventions for Alcohol & Other Drugs (INEBRIA). Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 12(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13722-017-0079-8

Glass, J. E., Tiffany, B., Matson, T. E., Lim, C., Gundersen, G., Kimbel, K., Hartzler, A. L., Curran, G. M., McWethy, A. G., Caldeiro, R. M., & Bradley, K. A. (2022). Approaches for implementing digital interventions for alcohol use disorders in primary care: A qualitative, user-centered design study. Implementation Research and Practice, 3, 26334895221135264. https://doi.org/10.1177/26334895221135264

Glass, J. E., McKay, J. R., Gustafson, D. H., Kornfield, R., Rathouz, P. J., McTavish, F. M., Atwood, A. K., Isham, A., Quanbeck, A., & Shah, D. (2017). Treatment seeking as a mechanism of change in a randomized controlled trial of a mobile health intervention to support recovery from alcohol use disorders. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 77, 57–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2017.03.011

Glass, J. E., Nunes, E. V., Bradley, K. A. (2020). Contingency management: A highly effective treatment for substance use disorders and the legal barriers that stand in its way. Health Affairs Blog. 10.1377/hblog20200305.965186. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200305.965186/full/ 

Palazzo, L., Dorsey, C. N., Mogk, J., Beatty, T., King, D., Stefanik-Guizlo, K., Key, D., Matson, T. E., Shea, M., Caldeiro, R. M., McWethy, A. G., Wong, E. S., Idu, A. E., & Glass, J. E. (2024). Formative evaluation of the implementation of digital therapeutics for opioids and other substance use disorders in primary care (DIGITS trial). Implementation Research and Practice, 5. https://doi.org/10.1177/26334895241301670

Mogk, J., Idu, A. E., Bobb, J. F., Key, D., Wong, E. S., Palazzo, L., Stefanik-Guizlo, K., King, D., Beatty, T., Dorsey, C. N., Caldeiro, R. M., Garza McWethy, A., & Glass, J. E. (2024). Prescription Digital Therapeutics for Substance Use Disorder in Primary Care: Mixed Methods Evaluation of a Pilot Implementation Study. JMIR Formative Research, 8, e59088. https://doi.org/10.2196/59088

Glass, J. E., Grant, J. D., Yoon, H. Y., & Bucholz, K. K. (2015). Alcohol problem recognition and help seeking in adolescents and young adults at varying genetic and environmental risk. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 153, 250–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2015.05.006

Glass, J. E., Williams, E. C., & Bucholz, K. K. (2014). Psychiatric comorbidity and perceived alcohol stigma in a nationally representative sample of individuals with DSM-5 alcohol use disorder. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 38(6), 1697–1705. https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.12422

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Research Fellowships: 

• Fellowship, Summer Institute on Randomized Controlled Trials of the National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, Office of Disease Prevention and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Warrenton, VA
• Fellowship, NIH Implementation Research Institute, St. Louis, MO
• Fellowship, Mixed Methods Research Training Program of the National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, Baltimore, MD 
• Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health
• Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health
• Fellowship, Kirschstein National Research Service Award Institutional Research Training Grant (T32), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health