Alcohol Research Group

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          • ABOUT THE CENTER

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            Senior Scientist, William (Bill) C. Kerr, PhD, is Director of ARG’s National Alcohol Research Center and Co-Directs the National Alcohol Survey and the Health Disparities projects.  Bill also serves as the scientific director at ARG and continues to lead R01 projects, including a grant to investigate secondhand harms from alcohol and other drugs.

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            Scientist Nina Mulia, DrPH, is Center Associate Director and Director of the Alcohol Services project. She specializes in and has published widely on race and ethnicity and socioeconomic disparities in heavy drinking, alcohol problems, and alcohol services utilization.

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          • ASSESSING HID OVER THE LIFECOURSE

            This project, led by Camillia Lui, PhD, traces trends in harmful drinking patterns over a 40-year period, and identifies a range of alcohol-related precursors and problems through event-based and population-based approaches to inform early screening and interventions for high-risk groups.

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            • About the National Alcohol Survey
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          • MEET THE SURVEY CO-DIRECTOR

            Scientist and Deputy Scientific Director, Priscilla Martinez, oversees the survey design, data collection, and analyses.  In the latest cycle of the NAS, Priscilla conducted dried blood spot sampling to help better understand the relationship between how our immune systems work and what role they might play in how alcohol use can affect our mental health.

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Epidemiology of Alcohol Problems: Risk of AIDS

Funding: NIAAA R01 AA08564

Project PI: Karen Trocki, PhD

Our goal in the past five years has been to explore how drinking behaviors are associated with sexual risk behaviors. In that time period, six surveys (two on local samples and four on national samples) and several experimental studies were designed and carried out to test this association. We considered sexually transmitted disease outcomes in pursuing the association between drinking behaviors and sexual risk behaviors. The specific aims detailed below were addressed through: (1) the collection of data on drinking and sexual risk behavior in conjunction with the Alcohol Research Group’s (ARG) 1995 National Alcohol Survey; (2) an interview and medical record study of 1,050 patients in Alameda County’s Public Health STD clinics; and (3) continuing analysis of selected data in existing ARG data sets. Specific aims were: (a) to investigate which aspects of drinking are associated with higher incidence and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases; (b) to investigate which aspects of sexual risk behavior are associated with higher incidence and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases; (c) to build models of the association of drinking, sexual risk behavior and STD outcomes using cross-sectional and longitudinal data; (d) to investigate epidemiological variations in these models as a function of gender, age, ethnicity and other demographic factors; (e) to investigate theoretical explanations for the association of drinking, sexual risk behaviors, and STD outcomes, such as common causality by third” variable factors (problem behavior impulsivity situational factors); and finally (f) to bridge the gap between research and prevention by investigating the applicability of the Theory of Planned Behavior to understanding STD outcomes under problematic and non-problematic circumstances.

Who We Are

About ARG

We are a non-profit research organization that seeks to improve public health through deepening our understanding of alcohol and other drug use and investigating innovative approaches to reduce its consequences for individuals, families, and communities.

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