Hispanic adolescents are disproportionately affected by drug use and its consequences. This is reflected in high rates of school dropouts, arrest for drug possession, alcohol, drug use disorders, disability and drug related crash injuries and fatalities. Mounting evidence suggest that impaired neurocognitive functioning, exposure to early, severe, or chronic social disadvantage, and stress related to conflicting cultural practices, independently predict adverse drug use outcomes. Yet, studies employing an integrated approach to explore how these factors interact to increase or decrease the risk of experiencing adverse drug use consequences are limited. Therefore, the immediate and overarching goal of this K01 application is to receive intensive, supervised career-development training on the intersection between addiction neuroscience and social and cross-cultural research applied to drug use research that will enable me to pursue a line of independent research on drug use disparities. In this application, I propose to investigate how socio- cultural, neurocognitive and drug use related factors interact to explain the adverse outcomes seen in the Hispanic population.
The specific aims of the proposed project include: 1) To determine whether neurocognitive factors (e.g., decision-making, episodic memory), mediate the associations between socio-cultural factors (e.g., early, severe, or chronic socio-economic disadvantage, ethnic discrimination, acculturative stress, Hispanic cultural values), and drug use outcomes (e.g. transition from use to drug use disorders, drug use trajectories, driving under the influence of drugs - DIU); 2) To examine whether socio-cultural factors moderate the associations between neurocognitive factors and drug use. These goals will be achieved by leveraging data, participants, and resources from an ongoing longitudinal study (parent study) that assesses decision-making and episodic memory in trajectories to cannabis addiction (R01DA031176), and interviewing a sub-sample of young Hispanics participating in the parent study and their parents or legal guardians (n=200 dyads). The proposed Mentored Research Scientist Development Award will build on my expertise in drug use epidemiology with advanced training in: addiction neuroscience, social and cross-cultural research on drug use disparities, interdisciplinary research on cognitive neuroscience and socio-cultural research, advanced statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal data, and responsible conduct of research. Overseeing this training is my primary mentor Dr. Raul Gonzalez, an expert in addiction neuroscience, and my co-mentor Dr. Mario De La Rosa, an expert in cross-cultural research and drug use disparities. The proposed K01, which is responsive to two of the two priority focus areas identified in the 2016-2020 NIDA Strategic Plan, will provide me with the resources, training, mentoring and knowledge needed to establish myself as a scientist with expertise on the intersection between addiction neuroscience and public health, and to develop a long-term independent transdisciplinary research program aimed at reducing and eliminating drug use disparities across and within minority populations.
Socio-cultural and neurocognitive factors are important and potentially modifiable determinants of drug use, yet research examining the how these factors interact to explain drug use disparities is scarce. The proposed K01 training will support a Hispanic new and early stage investigator to become an independent researcher and a leader in interdisciplinary research on drug use disparities. Specifically, the outlined project will contribute to understand how social factors, Hispanic cultural values, neurocognitive processes and drug use related factors interact to explain the adverse drug use outcomes seen in the growing and heterogeneous Hispanic population, which is essential to design effective drug use preventive interventions.
