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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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            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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            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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When Does Pressure Facilitate Help Seeking? 25 Year Trends and Correlates

Funding: NIAAA R21 AA018174

Project PI: Doug Polcin , EdD

This study uses data from the Alcohol Research Group (ARG) National Alcohol Survey (NAS) collected at six different time points over a 25 year period (1984-2009) (N’s = 2,058 to 8,000; pooled N=34,735) to describe the patterns of pressure that drinkers received during the past year and lifetime from family, friends, physicians, and the workplace to “drink less or act differently” when they drank. Study aims include investigation of 1) the characteristics of individuals who received pressure, 2) how receipt of pressure was related to help seeking in Alcoholics Anonymous and formal services, 3) how receipt of pressure was related to reasons for seeking and not seeking help, 4) how a variety of factors moderated the relationship between pressure and help seeking (e.g., alcohol related consequences, alcohol dependence severity, and beliefs about alcohol), and 5) how the impact of pressure varied for drinker subgroups (e.g., drug users, welfare recipients, drinkers arrested or convicted for alcohol offenses, and the uninsured).  Last, we will model 25-year trends in receipt of pressure and its impact on help seeking using age, time period, and birth cohort (APC) analyses.  Results should help policymakers and treatment providers facilitate the types of pressures that are associated with desirable outcomes, such as increasing treatment entry or attendance at AA meetings, and avoid counterproductive types of pressure that can increase resistance to help seeking.

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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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