Contents

New Awards at RIA

Director's Report

New Post Doc at RIA

RIA: A Microcosm for Buffalo, The City of Good Neighbors

Lights, Camera, Action!

Red Ribbon Prevention

Longtime RIA Supporter to Head Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Committee

RIA Scientist Presents a Research to Practice Seminar

RIA in New Orleans

Scientist Spotlight

Research Results

RIA’s Seminar Series

RIA Employees Recognized

Applause, Applause

Select Conference Presentations

New Awards at RIA

Sports, Gender, and Substance Use

A study to determine the nature of the relationships between sports and other extracurricular activities and substance use and other risky adolescent behaviors is spearheaded by Senior Research Scientist Grace M. Barnes, Ph.D. and Associate Research Scientist Kathleen Miller, Ph.D.

The $462,000 National Institute on Drug Abuse grant will help “establish more effective prevention and intervention strategies for reducing adolescent substance use and related risk behaviors,” according to Dr. Barnes.

“Dr. Miller and I are extremely fortunate to collaborate with a group of nationally renown sociologists including Dr. Michael Farrell, professor in UB’s Department of Sociology, Dr. Don Sabo, professor at D’Youville College, and Dr. Merrill Melnick, professor, SUNY College at Brockport,” Dr. Barnes stated.

“This group of investigators has coauthored previous research showing strong associations between participation in sports and reduced sexual risk-taking, especially among adolescent girls. The present grant will extend this research to explore the effects of sports and other extracurricular activities on substance use and other risky behaviors among female and male adolescents. Joseph Hoffman, an RIA statistician, will join the team to carry out complex multivariate analyses.”

Two large data sets will be used for this analysis. The Family and Adolescent Study is a six-year longitudinal study of 699 Western New York adolescents and their families. The 1997 school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey, generated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of priority health-risk behaviors in 16,262 American high school students.

AA Participation, Spirituality, and Alcohol Outcome

The impact of participation in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and spirituality on recovery from alcoholism is the focus of a new study by RIA Director Gerard J. Connors, Ph.D. and Deputy Director Kimberly S. Walitzer, Ph.D. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has awarded a $308,000 grant to study the subject.

“Relatively little empirical attention has been placed on spirituality,” according to Dr. Connors. “In this study, we plan to assess the relationship between AA participation and spirituality, which we define as a sense of life purpose, serenity, and religiosity.”

“We will be looking at the role of spirituality as the force of change behind AA participation,” according to Dr. Walitzer. “We want to examine how the development of a spiritual life influences people in their efforts to stop using alcohol.”

Participants for the research protocol will be recruited from the New York State Margaret A. Stutzman Addiction Treatment Center in Buffalo. Patients who volunteer for the study will be assessed three times: as they enter the residential treatment program, at the time of discharge, and at six months following treatment. Jennifer Giegel, M. S., will serve as project coordinator for the study.

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