Alcohol Research Group

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  • The Center
    • About
          • ABOUT THE CENTER

            • History, Mission, & Focus
          • MEET THE DIRECTOR


            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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    • People
          • THE CENTER TEAM

            • Center Leadership
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          • MEET THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

            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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    • Research
          • CENTER RESEARCH

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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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    • National Alcohol Surveys
          • ABOUT THE SURVEY

            • About the National Alcohol Survey
            • NAS Datasets
            • Get Access to the NAS data
          • 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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        • OVERVIEW

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  • Camillia K. Lui, PhD

  • Scientist
  • clui@arg.org 510-898-5842
  • EDUCATION

    Camillia Lui received her MPH and MA in Community Health Sciences and Asian American Studies, and a PhD in Community Health Sciences from UCLA. During her doctoral studies, she specialized in sociology and demography and completed a NIDA predoctoral fellowship in addiction health services at UCLA’s Integrated Substance Abuse Program. She later completed an NIAAA postdoctoral fellowship in alcohol research at UC Berkeley and the Alcohol Research Group. Her research is grounded in theory-based, community-engaged approaches with expertise in mixed-methods designs and the analysis of population-level, administrative, and longitudinal survey data.
  • RESEARCH FOCUS

    Camillia investigates how factors across life course and broader social environments, such as schools, communities, and policy systems, influence substance use and mental health. Her work spans alcohol and tobacco research, and mental health across the lifespan. Currently, Camillia leads research in three core areas.  She studies patterns of heavy and high-intensity drinking over the life course to identify population-level risk factors. She also partners with  community colleges to explore how tobacco-free policies and campus health services can reduce tobacco use and the co-use of alcohol and cannabis among young adults. By applying a socioecological framework and mixed-methods design, she examines youth suicide and access to mental health services in Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. Across her research, Camillia integrates advanced statistical techniques, qualitative methods, and community-engaged approaches to build evidence that strengthens prevention efforts, informs responsive policy, and improves systems of care for tobacco, substance use, and mental health.

  • Camillia is a scientist with over 20 years of experience in social epidemiology, community-engaged research and practice, and quantitative and qualitative methods. Her work focuses on the intersection of substance use, mental health, and public health, guided by theory-driven frameworks, community engagement, and a strong commitment to translating research into meaningful practice.

    At the Alcohol Research Group (ARG), Camillia explores how social and educational systems shape patterns of alcohol, tobacco, and other substance use across the life course. Using longitudinal and population-level data, she identifies critical transition points, especially in education, as opportunities for prevention and intervention. Her current work focuses on community colleges as key settings for implementing interventions, from screening to campus-wide policies, to promote academic success, reduce substance use, and improve health and well-being.

    Camillia is also deeply engaged in applied research focused on the prevention, intervention, and policy dimensions of substance use and mental health. She collaborates with community-based organizations to build organizational capacity to translate research and evaluation findings into effective programs. Since 2017, she provided technical assistance through Special Service for Groups under the CRDP Initiative, supporting Asian American and Pacific Islander organizations in implementing and evaluating community-defined evidence practices in mental health. Through this work, she has partnered with community organizations to conduct research on youth mental health and suicide prevention using mixed methods such as school-based surveys and focus groups.

    Camillia also contributes to statewide public health strategy as a member of the California AA and NHPI Health Coalition Task Force and the California Department of Health Care Services’ Prevention State Epidemiological Workgroup.

Areas of Expertise

Treatment & Recovery
Health
Policy
Epidemiology
Methodology

FEATURED PROJECTS

Community College Smokefree Policies: Disparities, Contexts and Strategies

Principal Investigator

Disaggregating Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to identify mechanisms of adolescent suicide risk

Principal Investigator

Disrupting Pathways from Early Adversity to Adult Substance Abuse: Identifying Education Resilience Factors in Diverse Groups

Co-Investigator

Alcohol and Tobacco Use and Desistance Among Asian Americans: A Lifecourse Examination of Critical Periods and Subgroup Disparities

Co-Investigator

Differential Effects of Alcohol-related Policy Across U.S. Population Subgroups (A Center Research Component)

Associate Scientist

Socioeconomic Status and Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment (A Center Pilot Study)

Pilot Director

Inter-relationships Between Life-course Alcohol Patterns and Health Conditions

Associate Scientist

Understanding Racial Disparities in Heavy Drinking over the Life Course

Associate Scientist

Effects of College Attendance on Young Adults in Recovery

Pilot Director

12-step Alternatives and Recovery Outcomes in a Large, National Study

Associate Scientist

High-Intensity Drinking over the Life Course

Co-Director

California Reducing Disparities Project—Phase II: Asian American and Pacific Islander Technical Assistance Provider: Special Service for Groups

Subcontractor

IN THE NEWS

See All News
Project Update: Smoke-free Policy Adoption at Community Colleges

Mixed-method study looks at policy adoption throughout California. Learn more

NYT: This Drinking Habit Is More Dangerous Than Bingeing

Dr. Camillia Lui featured in recent NYT article on HIDLearn more


PUBLICATIONS

See All Publications
Unmasking suicidal ideation for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander youths via data disaggregation


JAMA Netw Open, 2024

Patterns of alcohol, cannabis, and e-cigarette use/co-use and mental health among U.S. college students


Substance Use & Misuse, 2024

Navigating threats of wildfires and individual rights to adopt 100% tobacco-free policy in rural California community colleges


2024

Unmasking suicidal ideation for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Youths via data disaggregation


JAMA Network Open, 2024

Associations between early childhood adversity and behavioral, substance use, and academic outcomes in childhood through adolescence in a U.S. longitudinal cohort


Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2023

School and community factors associated with the adoption of 100% smoke-free policy by California community colleges, 2003-2019


American Journal of Health Promotion, 2022

Effects of Medicaid expansion on alcohol and opioid treatment admissions in US racial/ethnic groups


Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2022

Intersections of neighborhood co-ethnic density and nativity status on heavy drinking in a general population sample of US Latinos and Asians


Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2021

Lifecourse drinking patterns, hypertension, and heart problems among U.S. adults


American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2020

The downward spiral: Socioeconomic causes and consequences of alcohol dependence among men in late young adulthood, and relations to racial/ethnic disparities


Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2020

US alcohol treatment admissions after the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act: Do state parity laws and race/ethnicity make a difference?


Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2019

Trends and age, period and cohort effects for marijuana use prevalence in the 1984 to 2015 US National Alcohol Surveys


Addiction, 2018

Educational differences in alcohol consumption and heavy drinking: an age-period-cohort perspective


Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2018

A longitudinal study of the comparative efficacy of Women for Sobriety, LifeRing, SMART Recovery, and 12-step groups for those with AUD


Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2018

A life course approach to understanding racial/ethnic differences in transitions into and out of alcohol problems


Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2018

Socioeconomic differences in adolescent substance abuse treatment participation and long-term outcomes


Addictive Behaviors, 2017

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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