A recent study from ARG scientist Nina Mulia and colleagues assessed long-term heavy drinking patterns of racial/ethnic groups and found some surprising results. Consistent with other studies, their research showed a significant decline in White men and women's heavy drinking in their 20's while Black men and women's drinking increased during the same period. The study team defined heavy drinking as having six or more drinks on one occasion. What the research team did not expect to find was … [Read more...]
Spotlight
Researcher’s Work Helps Reduce Disparities
While ARG is known for its population-based analyses of how drinking and other drug use affects our health, it is also a place where scientists engage and foster partnerships with community-based organizations to support the people they serve. One such researcher is Associate Scientist Camillia Lui. Since her career began, Lui has looked at health-related disparities among racial/ethnic groups and adolescents and young adults. For Lui, whether measuring drinking rates or investigating … [Read more...]
Additions to the National Alcohol Survey Reflect Societal Shifts
Since the National Alcohol Survey (NAS) first launched in 1964, ARG researchers have sought to increase its impact by developing a more robust and relevant tool with which to look at the nation’s alcohol consumption. At the same time, the survey has evolved to reflect changes in our society, our population, and how we communicate with each other. Over the years, a substantial number of NAS-affiliated independent grants have used NAS and additional data to focus on nationally-salient emerging … [Read more...]
NIAAA Funds Training Program for Another 5 Years
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) awarded another five-year grant to ARG’s training program, which has been operating since 1971. In collaboration with the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, the program fosters the development of trainees as active researchers in the field of alcohol studies. To date, the program has mentored 266 fellows with three predocs and three postdocs supported each year. Through a highly interactive … [Read more...]
SBIR Subaward Supports Innovative APP
ARG received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant sub-award in collaboration with BrightOutcome, an innovative software development company that focuses on creating applications to improve population health. This contract will see the research team through Phase II of a project that aims to enhance a previously developed multi-translated alcohol measures catalog, which featured Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. The current prototype contains 127 … [Read more...]
New Study Looks at Alcohol’s Harms to Others Around the World
A new NIAAA-funded 4-year study will be the first multinational project to assess the extent and impacts of harms experienced due to heavy drinking by the drinker's family, friends and strangers. It will provide new insights into how different social and cultural contexts and alcohol-related policies impact such harms. While the study of the broad array of alcohol's harms to others (AHTO) is a fairly new area of research, previous work has looked at particular second-hand harms from … [Read more...]
How Place Affects Your Health
For ARG Scientist, Katherine Karriker-Jaffe, PhD, what began as an interest in health and social justice has developed into a passion to better understand how our neighborhoods – where we live, work and play – influence whether we drink, smoke or use other substances and whether we have problems due to substance use. While there is a long tradition of looking at a neighborhood’s impact on our health, there has been less work done on sub-group effects, that is, how specific groups of people … [Read more...]
Celebrating 60 Years of Research
At ARG's holiday party, where colleagues, friends and family gathered in the organization's offices in Emeryville, CA, I was struck by the diversity of people in attendance. While young children scribbled in coloring books in an adjoining room with parents watching on, older individuals sat together in the reception area, discussing the old days when ARG consisted of a handful of people intent on changing the world of alcohol research. One of those individuals was Walter Clark who was hired … [Read more...]
Study Assesses Recovery Residences for LGBTI
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) adults face unique health disparities and addressing these disparities is a national health priority. Within this community, men who have sex with men (MSM) may be at elevated risk for alcohol and drug use as well as serious, yet preventable health conditions such as HIV and other STDs, viral hepatitis, pneumonia, and TB. Research suggests that addiction recovery residences are a promising mechanism to promote and sustain recovery from … [Read more...]
Visiting Scholar from Brazil Joins ARG
ARG is pleased to welcome visiting scholar, Gabriel Andreuccetti, PhD, who has moved from Sao Paulo to spend a year working with Senior Scientist Cheryl Cherpitel, PhD. This is his second time visiting ARG and we're excited to have him back in the Bay Area. Recently, we spent some time with Gabriel to learn more about his work and what brought him to ARG. ARG: First, it's so nice to have you here, Gabriel. For people who don't know you, can you tell us a little about where you’re from? … [Read more...]
