A new study from ARG Senior Scientist Sarah E. Zemore and colleagues found that people in recovery who attended alternative support groups experienced more cohesion and greater satisfaction when compared with members of traditional 12-step programs. Alternative programs included Women for Sobriety, LifeRing, and SMART Recovery. Study team members included ARG scientists Lee Kaskutas and Amy Mericle, and research associate Jordana Hemberg. Results also indicated that people who attended … [Read more...]
The Community
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How big is your drink?
Knowing what a standard drink size is will help you stay within the low-risk drinking guidelines.
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Drinking and Injuires
New study highlights injury risk for people who are occasionally heavy drinkers.
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Alternatives to 12-Step Groups
People with an alcohol use disorder who participated in alternative mutual help groups had similar abstinence outcomes as those who participated in traditional 12-step groups.
Turning our research into relevant and accessible information that can help you make more informed choices and lead a healthier life is our goal. Here, we provide the most recent and essential findings on issues related to drinking, including how consumption affects your health, your family and your community.
New Asian American Study Funded
Associate Scientist Won Kim Cook will lead a new study that looks at disadvantage and drinking outcomes among Asian Americans. Scientist Nina Mulia and biostatistician Libo Li round out the research team, bringing to the project expertise on disparities and statistical analyses, respectively. The study aims to investigate the relationship between disadvantage and heavy drinking, including alcohol use disorders, among Asian American adults and the ways in which this relationship is modified … [Read more...]
Cancer Survivors Drink More After Diagnosis
Cancer survivors were more likely to report heavy drinking and more frequent heavy drinking occasions compared to others at the same ages with similar drinking histories, according to a new study from the Alcohol Research Group, a program of the Public Health Institute. Heavy drinking was defined as having five or more drinks at any one time. When racial and ethnic group-specific effects were evaluated, this increased heavy drinking was found to occur among women and Whites, while no increase … [Read more...]
WA Support for Marijuana Legalization Grew
If the vote for marijuana legalization in Washington State were to be held again, Initiative 502 (I-502) would potentially have a stronger majority than it did in November 2012, according to a new study from the Alcohol Research Group, a program of the Public Health Institute, published today in Contemporary Drug Problems. Researchers found that among people who voted against I-502, 14 percent would now vote in favor of the measure compared to 4.8 percent of yes-voters who would change their … [Read more...]
Washington Regrets Vote to End Monopoly
Washington State residents who voted in favor of privatizing liquor sales were eight times more likely to express a desire to change their original vote than residents who voted against the measure, according to a study from the Alcohol Research Group, a program of the Public Health Institute, published today in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Findings suggested that 20 percent of individuals who voted in 2011 to end the government monopoly on liquor sales have changed their … [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...]
ARG Receives Five-Year Grant
ARG is pleased to announce it has received a $7.3M grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to support the continuation of its National Alcohol Research Center. The funds will be dispersed over a five year period beginning this year through to 2020. The grant supports four core components and three research projects that focus on addressing alcohol-related health disparities in order to identify and reduce the effects of economic or social disadvantage on … [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...]
Over 40 Years & Still Going Strong
When the National Alcohol Survey (NAS) first began in the mid-1960s, over 2500 people across the US were interviewed. Since then, the NAS has grown to include almost 8,000 US adults enabling both understanding the mechanisms underlying drinking behaviors and the long-term monitoring of our nation’s drinking patterns and its associated problems. While our drinking habits and relationship to alcohol have changed, measuring such changes provides a greater understanding of how alcohol impacts our … [Read more...]
