Five-year award—approximately $1.8M/year

Components:

1. Core (Co-Component Directors: Paul Gruenewald and MJ Paschall)
2. “Information and Dissemination in Support of Community Interventions” (Co-Component Directors: Paul Gruenewald and Kathy Stewart—transitioning to Sue Thomas in Year 2)
3. “Social Mechanisms of Early Alcohol and Substance Use Initiation and Progression to Problems”(Co-Component Directors: Sharon Lipperman-Kreda and Joel Grube)
4. “Mexican-American Drinking Contexts On and Away from the U.S./Mexico Border” (Co-Component Directors: Raul Caetano and Patrice Vaeth)
5. “Social Ecological Contexts of Heavy Drinking and Alcohol Use Disorders” (Component Director: Paul Gruenewald)
6. “Framework for Behavioral Risk Models of Alcohol-Related Problems” (Co-Component Directors: Christina Mair and Paul Gruenewald)

Center Grant Abstract

The Prevention Research Center (PRC), a division of Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), was formed in October 1983 around the "Environmental Approaches to Prevention" Research Center grant, selected by peer review as the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's (NIAAA's) national Center for prevention research. 

The goals of the Center are: (1) to undertake innovative basic research that contributes to the development of cost-effective environmental prevention programs and policies at the local, state, and national levels; (2) to undertake research of applied and practical importance to inform policies and programs to prevent alcohol-related problems, especially in the area of environmental factors; (3) to summarize and synthesize new and existing knowledge about prevention theories, policies, and programs, and to disseminate this information to professional, academic, and community audiences; and (4) to provide multidisciplinary training and research opportunities for post-doctoral fellows and other early investigators. 

We take a multidisciplinary approach to prevention research that emphasizes integration across theories from the biological to the behavioral and social sciences to enhance our understanding of the causal impacts of drinking environments on drinking patterns and problems. Research we are proposing for the renewal of the Center continues this approach, building upon extensive work conducted among cities in California in the previous rounds, and continuing to focus on the micro- and macro-ecological contexts of alcohol use.  

We will consider the social and situational conditions that affect early initiation of underage alcohol use, intoxication, and progression to heavier drinking and related problems (Component #3). Identification of these conditions will improve our understanding of how micro-environments affect early developmental trajectories and guide us toward effective preventive interventions to reduce underage alcohol use.  

We will examine young adult drinking patterns and problems in large Hispanic/Latino communities situated along the California-Mexico border and some distance away in order to assess how macro- and micro-ecological differences in access to alcohol affect drinking and problems in this subpopulation (Component #4). This study will illuminate sources of alcohol-related health disparities that arise among Hispanic/Latino drinkers and help us identify those unique drinking contexts and situations for which effective preventive interventions should be designed.  

We will investigate the dynamic inter-relationships of alcohol use, problems, and alcohol use disorder (AUD) symptomatology among heavy drinkers in order to establish how micro-ecological contexts of heavy drinking might be manipulated to reduce the large number of problems that arise in communities in association with AUDs (Component #5).  

For the first time in any environmental research program we will integrate theoretical models and empirical data from these studies into an agent-based modeling framework that allows us to test a select set of scenarios that involve altering social ecological mechanisms that could ameliorate alcohol-related problems in communities (the Framework for Reconstructing Epidemiological Dynamics, FRED; Component #6).  

Finally, we will continue our focus on providing information and dissemination of community-based preventive intervention research, expanding our utilization of social media (Component #2).

Unique Contributions of Center Components Proposed in the Current Round

2017-2022. The current Center application builds upon the successful work of the previous round identifying dynamic relations between drinking contexts and problems, and extends our research on “prevention in place” to identify modifiable environmental conditions that contribute to early alcohol use and progression to heavier drinking during adolescence, problems specific to Hispanic populations living in US-Mexico border communities, and excessive drinking and AUD and related problems in adulthood. Additionally, we will utilize a realistic agent-based modeling platform that captures the demographic and geographic heterogeneities of the population of the United States to estimate effects of micro- and macro-environmental conditions and interventions (e.g., reducing the physical availability of alcohol) on community health outcomes such as child abuse and neglect, underage drinking, drinking and driving, motor vehicle crashes and fatalities, and violent crime over time and space.

Component #2. “Information and Dissemination in Support of Community Interventions” will provide on-going dissemination of scientific information and materials based on key research findings from past and on-going PRC projects to general and targeted audiences.  Although PRC has established an infrastructure for information and dissemination, this component will continue to identify the most effective communication channels for disseminating information and materials, and to identify appropriate feedback loops between the scientific community and target audiences. This project has been designed to be more creative in developing the vehicles or modes of dissemination, and in developing systems for the researchers to be aware of in responding to the audiences they wish to address with their key findings.

Component #3.“Social Mechanisms of Early Alcohol and Substance Use Initiation and Progression to Problems” will investigate the contexts in which early drinking, heavy drinking and intoxication occur, including detailed characteristics of those contexts, to assess how they relate to the later development of drinking, other substance use, and problems. This longitudinal study will examine whether and how specific social and other contextual characteristics, including influences of close friends, venue-based social characteristics, adult supervision, and alcohol availability, contribute to maintaining alcohol use over time and escalating into more problems among early onset drinkers. In particular, this study will examine why some youth who drink at an early age develop problems and some do not.  Using qualitative interviews with early onset drinkers, this study will also investigate the circumstances and contexts of early experiences of drinking and intoxication including factors that allow drinking in these contexts and the perceived barriers to and facilitators of drinking in those contexts. Findings from this component will provide context-related parameters for a simulation model for Component #6 that can be applied to other communities across the U.S.

Component #4. “Mexican-American Drinking Contexts On and Away from the U.S./Mexico Border” will use analyses of archival data (e.g., hospital admissions), systematic observations of drinking venues, and survey methods to test associations between drinking contexts and associated drinking problems, including DSM-5 AUD among Mexican American younger adults (18-40 years of age) living in the California/Mexico border area, in Imperial City, El Centro, Heber, and Calexico. This sample will be compared to a “control” group of age-matched Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic Whites who live away from the border, in the cities of Delano, Madera, Tulare, and Visalia, in the Central Valley of California. Consistent with Center goals, this component will further advance understanding of contextual influences on drinking and alcohol problems. In addition, this component extends Center research to the California border, an area of high alcohol availability, to examine the extent to which border location influences choices of drinking venues, levels of drinking, and drinking-related problems. This component will share archival data with Component #5 and will provide parameters for a simulation model for Component #6 that can be applied to other communities along the Mexican border and elsewhere in the U.S.

Component #5. “Social Ecological Contexts of Heavy Drinking and Alcohol Use Disorders” will test a series of hypotheses about the social ecological correlates of heavy drinking that stem from an analysis of AUD symptoms and their relationships to drinking, drinking contexts and problems, and symptoms of alcohol dependence (e.g., withdrawal). We will develop a dynamic model of relationships between drinking, problems and AUD symptoms that can be used to assess ways in which drinking contexts and situations differentially affect problems among AUD vs. non-AUD drinkers, and begin to measure broader impacts that AUDs have on alcohol problems across communities in the US. Data collected in this component will be used to parameterize a simulation model of community impacts of AUDs for cities in California, generalizable to other communities in the U.S. (Component #6) and provide support for archival data analyses in Component #4.