Cheryl Cherpitel, BSN ’68, DrPH, MPH : Influencing Public Health on the International Stage

Although she did not make a career of nursing, the training that Cheryl Cherpitel received at the UCSF School of Nursing was foundational to her life and work. 

The school provided a springboard for her path into public health and epidemiology, and the nursing background gave her credibility and comfort in the emergency rooms (ERs) where she did the defining work of her career: studying the effects of alcohol consumption on injuries.  

Through her groundbreaking efforts, Cherpitel developed the International Collaborative Alcohol and Injury Study (ICAIS), which included more than 40,000 patients in 101 ERs across 33 countries. She also developed the Rapid Alcohol Problems Screen, which has been used nationally and internationally to identify alcohol-use disorders, create interventions, and inform policies to help prevent injuries and violence. 

Now semi-retired, Cherpitel lives in Orinda, Calif., with her husband of 34 years, Rocco Chavez. 

She is this year’s recipient of the UCSF Alumni Discovery Award, which honors an alum who has made outstanding achievements creating positive change through basic science and health care research and has brought distinction to themselves and the UCSF community. 

“I'm thrilled. It really means a lot,” Cherpitel says. “I’d like to thank my nursing school classmate Catherine Blosser, BSN ’68, RN, who nominated me for the award. I’d also like to acknowledge Jason Bond, PhD, and Yu Ye, MA, biostatisticians who have worked closely with me for the last 25 years and whose collaboration has been instrumental to the success of my research.” 

Finding her path to public health 

While she has worked around the world, Cherpitel didn’t leave her native Kansas until after her junior year of high school, when she visited relatives in California. She’d never liked Kansas’ harsh winters, so sunny California had great appeal. At UC Berkeley, she studied pre-nursing, following in the footsteps of nurses in her family, including her mother and three aunts. 

“At that time, there weren't quite as many options for women,” Cherpitel says. “It was sort of a sealed deal.” 

Finding that she lacked enthusiasm for clinical nursing, she shifted to a realm that was a much better fit by earning a Master of Public Health degree from Berkeley.  

Her master’s studies included field work in rural Kentucky, where she noticed that, despite several counties being “dry” – meaning the sale of alcoholic beverages was forbidden by local governments – drinking problems were rampant. Later work in Mississippi revealed similar problems. She returned to Berkeley for her doctorate in epidemiology, studying regional variations in alcohol use. Her life’s work would grow from that decision.  

Cherpitel became associated with the Bay Area nonprofit Alcohol Research Group (ARG) through a National Research Service Award fellowship. ARG took notice of her dissertation research in the South and her nursing background and asked her to lead a study of alcohol-related injuries in local ERs. 

She gave the process a trial run at what is now Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, studying a consecutive sample of patients around the clock for two months, a time span that included big nights like the Super Bowl and a Grateful Dead concert. She recalls this as a “trial by fire,” giving breathalyzer tests in the ER and asking what kind and how much alcohol each person had consumed. She found that alcohol was a prevalent factor in accidents that led to ER visits, but that it didn’t involve numerous people, as the same patients returned repeatedly. 

Next came a broader study in Contra Costa County, and in 1985, at the first International Conference on Alcohol and Injury, she made connections that would take her methods global. She traveled to numerous countries – including Poland, Mexico, Argentina, and Australia – teaching ER staff members how to conduct the survey she’d designed.  

The resulting global data led to development of the ICAIS, which is still used in ERs today and serves as the gold standard internationally for epidemiological studies of alcohol and injury. 

Cherpitel says her work has resonated so much because alcohol abuse is a huge problem. “It contributes a lot to the global burden of disease,” she says. “By focusing on the emergency room as a way to evaluate alcohol’s role in injury, I think conducting similar epidemiological studies has had a significant appeal to governments.” 

The World Health Organization became interested too, seeking in the early 2000s to use her survey instrument in a dozen more countries. The National Institutes of Health also gave Cherpitel an R01 Research Project Grant, which would be continuously renewed and funded her work for the next 18 years. 

Making a difference locally and globally 

Last year, she went to South Africa to receive the Jellinek Memorial Award in recognition of her “profound global contribution to the study of alcohol and understanding alcohol’s role in emergency-room studies by pioneering, designing, implementing, leading, and training people in such studies across five continents.” 

It was a fitting excursion since interacting with and training colleagues around the world has been the most rewarding part of her work.  

“What I found in so many of the countries is that people are just so appreciative,” Cherpitel says. “It's really nice to feel like you might be making a little bit of a difference in their life. I guess the nursing persona comes out.”