Author: Michelle Villar

17 Apr ReACH Lab RAs Earn Spots In Master’s Program And Summer Program

Our ReACH Lab members continue to make us proud, exemplified by Lauren Vilau and Patricia Otero, who earned a Master’s Program spot and a spot in the Strong Children’s Research Center Summer Program, respectively. 

ReACH Lab undergraduate RA Lauren Vilau will be starting her journey towards a Master’s degree this Fall after getting accepted to Florida International University’s (FIU) Professional Counseling Psychology (PCP) Master’s Program. FIU’s PCP program “is committed to preparing future therapists, counselors, consultants, and researchers, for the independent and licensed professional practice of counseling, psychotherapy, and psychotherapy research. [Their] program offers students a solid foundation in psychology and opportunities for specializing in a range of clinical problems and diverse populations, through faculty-guided research and supervised clinical training.” During her time in this program she will work to gain the skills necessary to work with children in the foster care system. She hopes to work with children who have backgrounds of abuse and neglect and help them through their journey, whether it be reunification or adoption. 

Ms. Otero, an undergraduate RA of the ReACH Lab and recent FIU graduate, earned a spot in Strong Children’s Research Center Summer Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center, which is designed for undergraduate students interested in pursuing a career in biomedical or clinical research. The program provides trainees with extensive contact with research mentors either from the Department of Pediatrics or other partners who are engaged in research relevant to childhood diseases and developmental biology who can help guide the research project, serve as role models, and provide career direction. During this 10-week internship, Patricia will not only participate in her own research project, but also attend research seminars as well as participate in clinical shadowing rotations. At the end of the summer internship, students are required to produce an abstract and present the results of their research at the Annual Poster Session held on the final day of the program. As a pre-medical student interested in youth, Patricia hopes to get as much insight about this field since she believes it will make her a better rounded future physician. This program will grant Patricia the opportunity to further explore and expand her interest in another field of research which will better prepare her for her future endeavors.   

The ReACH Lab is extremely proud of Ms. Vilau and Ms. Otero, congratulations to you both! 

10 Apr ACE Project RCMI Research in Progress Presentation

On March 29th, 2019, the ACE Project team was invited to provide a presentation to Florida International University’s Research Center in Minority Institutions as part of the FIU-RCMI’s Research in Progress Seminar Series. The ACE Project is co-directed by Dr. Elisa Trucco and Dr. Matthew Sutherland and is an ongoing project under the ReACH Lab and the NBC Lab.  The event consisted of an overview of the project, from the steps leading to the initial launch of the study to the preliminary findings. More than 30 attendees listened as Dr. Trucco presented on the background and aims of the project and Dr. Sutherland explained the neuroimaging procedures conducted at the Center for Imaging Science. Nasreen Hidmi, program coordinator, and Brigitte Madan, senior research assistant, provided more details on the initial launch and community engagement while graduate students Jessica Flannery and Julie Cristello presented on a few preliminary findings.

The ACE Project seeks to find out how certain factors, such as parenting, peers, environment and personality, influence teens’ decisions to engage in substance use during the high school years, with an emphasis on knowing more about e-cigarettes. Teens and their parents complete questionnaires while some teens also participate in completing an MRI scan to explore how brain activity is linked to thoughts, feelings and actions.

The ACE Project Team has been active in the South Florida Community this spring, providing educational presentations in local high schools for both students and parents on e-cigarette use/vaping among teens, as well as actively recruiting participants. The ACE Project team looks forward to inviting more families to participate this summer! 

05 Apr San Francisco, Home Of Juul Headquarters, Weighs Ban On E-Cigarettes

Earlier this month, officials in San Francisco proposed a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes “until the federal government regulates vaping products.” Three major cities in the United States—San Francisco, New York, and Chicago—have teamed up and sent a letter to the FDA demanding an evaluation of the effects of e-cigarettes on the health of Americans, particularly in youth. This demand comes following an FDA report in early March that “released proposed guidelines giving companies until 2021 to submit applications for the evaluation”, a lax guideline according to some critics who believe that “the review should have been completed before e-cigarettes entered the market.”

Although these steps should have been taken before e-cigarettes entered the market, which would have been crucial in the prevention of nicotine dependence in adolescents, these steps are nonetheless imperative now to reduce the number of future teens who will become hooked on ENDS. San Francisco is leading the way in this and other anti-smoking efforts; the city banned the sale of flavored tobacco and flavored vaping products, and also banned smoking in public places  It also “has introduced legislation that bars making, selling or distributing tobacco on city property.” Interestingly, Juul, one of the most successful e-cigarette companies, has headquarters in San Francisco (more specifically Pier 70). The battle between the company and lawmakers continues. While Juul argues that the proposed legislation limits choices for current smokers, anti-smoking advocates say that they help to reduce nicotine dependence in youth and could help overturn this public health epidemic.

To read more from the article, click here.

27 Mar Adolescent Vaping Rates Continue to Rise

It seems like vaping among teenagers is not showing signs of slowing down, according to an annual survey called Monitoring the Future that surveys 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in the United states across nearly 45,000 students around the country. Released in late 2018, the latest report showed that 17.6% of 8th graders, 32.3% of 10th graders, and 37.3% of 12th graders reported using electronic cigarettes, or vapes, in the past year. These numbers back up previous numbers, including data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in what the Food and Drug Administration has called an “epidemic” of e-cigarette use among adolescents. According to the authors of the report, “the absolute increases in the prevalence of nicotine vaping among 12th-graders and 10th-graders are the largest ever recorded by Monitoring the Future in the 44 years that it has continuously tracked dozens of substances.”

The silver lining in these harrowing numbers is that substance use, other than vaping, is on the decline. According to the report, “substances at historic low levels of use in 2018 were alcohol, cigarettes, heroin, prescription opioids, MDMA (ecstasy or Molly), methamphetamine, amphetamines, sedatives and ketamine.” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, had the following to say: “What we are seeing is a change in the patterns of drug taking among teenagers in that they are the lowest that we’ve seen for many years…So we have very good news, but at the same time, we have to be vigilant, because of this very high uptake and embracing of vaping by teenagers that could lead them then to the administration of other drugs.” 

The report also asked students what specific substances they were vaping. 8th graders reported vaping “just flavoring” 15.1% of the time, followed by nicotine at 10.9% and marijuana at 4.4%. 10th graders had similar numbers compared to the 8th graders, but showed 12.4% of students vaping marijuana. Finally, 12th graders reported vaping nicotine 29.7% of the time, followed by 25.7% flavoring, and 13.1% marijuana. It’s worth mentioning that a portion of the students might not be aware exactly what they are vaping, and might think they are merely vaping flavoring when they are in fact vaping nicotine. As the Center for Disease Control has previously reported, “some e-cigarettes marketed as containing zero percent nicotine have been found to contain nicotine.”

For more information from the article, click here.

20 Mar E-Cigarettes Could Be Taxed Like Tobacco Products Under New Budget Proposal

13 Mar ReACH Lab Members Win Grant And Internship Spot

Our ReACH Lab members never fail to make us proud, exemplified by Benjelene Sutherland and Maria Zapata who won a Psi Chi grant and MU-ARTSS internship spot, respectively. 

Ms. Sutherland, an undergraduate RA and staff member of the ReACH Lab, submitted her proposal Generalized Anxiety: A Risk Factor for Electronic Cigarette Use Among Adolescents to the psychology honor society Psi Chi, who awarded her with a grant for her research. The purpose of her study is to examine whether symptoms of generalized anxiety increase risk for e-cigarette use and whether this association is stronger among youth with high impulsivity and low reward sensitivity. The study will be part of the ACE Project (Antecedents and Consequences of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems) and will collect data from 108 juniors and seniors enrolled in Miami-Dade County Public Schools and their caretakers. The funds awarded by Psi Chi will be used for lab supplies such as cups for urine collection, breath test mouth pieces, NicAlert salivary cotinine tests, and site licenses for psychometric measures. Benjelene’s career goals revolve around better understanding how drug use impacts the brain, as well as risk factors for substance use. She hopes to continue her education and obtain her Ph.D. in Neuroscience. She also hopes to provide strategies for substance use prevention, and therapies for patients with certain neurological diseases and psychological disorders.

Ms. Zapata, an undergraduate RA of the ReACH Lab and McNair fellow, earned a spot in the University of Missouri-Alcohol Research Training Summer School (MU-ARTSS) program, which is designed for undergraduate students interested in alcohol research and possible careers as alcohol researchers. In this program, a variety of professors represent different levels of expertise in the science of addiction and alcohol, ranging from personality, genetics, social and affective neuroscience, and social network analysis. The students who are accepted in the MU-ARTSS program are part of the university’s undergraduate research internship program, where the undergraduates will develop a research abstract and create a poster to represent at the MU Research and Creative Achievements Forum. The program is structured by a week-long intensive introduction to alcohol research, followed by the 8-week internship in the lab of a MU-ARTSSS professor. This program will grant Maria an independent learning experience that will offer a sense of what a grad-school working environment will be. She will be able to work in the lab of very well-known researchers in this field under the directorship of Dr. Kenneth Sher. Maria says “this program comes to be highly competitive and I am more than excited for the opportunity given.”

The ReACH Lab is very proud of these two women, congratulations to both of you!  

06 Mar FDA Considering Drugs To Help Adolescents Quit Vaping

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posed the question of if drug therapy is a possible solution in the quest to help teens quit vaping during a public hearing held in mid-January. The FDA currently has no approved nicotine cessation products for e-cigarette users under 18. Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, previously told CNN: “The FDA has concluded that the level of addiction it is seeing among youthful e-cigarette users is so disturbing and so unprecedented that it needs to at least ask whether we need a solution that goes beyond what we ever did with cigarettes.” The urgency in finding a solution for these nicotine-dependent teens is due to the potentially greatly differing methods of cessation when comparing e-cigarettes to traditional cigarettes, and comes from the fact that data is still lacking concerning e-cigarettes, especially data in cessation treatment. 

The FDA was criticized by some over this hearing, however, as critics believed the focus in adolescents should be on prevention and not treatment. Dr. Susanne Tanski, former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium, said: “Preventing youth use in the first place should be FDA’s primary goal. We must all recognize that if an adolescent has developed a nicotine addiction as a result of vaping, we’ve already failed.”

To read more from the article, click here.

28 Feb ReACH Lab Graduate Student Presents Poster At MICAMH Conference

A big shout out to Julie Cristello, ReACH Lab Graduate Student, for presenting her poster examining the association between adolescent sport involvement and substance use during early adulthood at this year’s Miami International Child & Adolescent Mental Health (MICAMH) Conference. The MICAMH Conference “is the leading interdisciplinary conference that presents state-of-the-art, evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions for mental health and educational problems in children and adolescents.” Below is a more detailed description of Ms. Cristello’s poster Exploring pathways to adolescent substance use: A longitudinal examination of sport participation:

“While sport participation has many benefits (e.g. increased self-esteem), its impact on adolescent substance use is unclear. Research has shown that sport participation increases risk for alcohol use and reduces risk for cigarette use. Additionally, it increases exposure to peer groups that may facilitate use. Yet, pathways by which these associations occur remain untested. Moreover, research on the role of sport participation on marijuana use is lacking. The sample consisted of 533 adolescents from the Michigan Longitudinal Study (67.4% male, 78.1% White). Prospective models were tested to determine whether aggression mediated, and peer substance use moderated, the association between number of sports played and later alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. There was evidence for a direct effect of number of sports played on alcohol use, while the association between number of sports played and cigarette use was mediated by aggression (Estimate=0.029, 95% CI [0.001, 0.079]). Within the marijuana model, the indirect effect was marginally significant (Estimate = 0.025, 95% CI [-0.002, 0.081]). Findings can be explained in part by social norms. Adolescent cigarette and marijuana use are viewed as more deviant compared to alcohol use. Thus, deviant behavior such as aggression may only characterize the pathway between sport participation and less normative behaviors, such as cigarette and marijuana use.”

Thanks for making the ReACH Lab proud as always Julie, we look forward to seeing what you do next! 

26 Feb ReACH Lab Continues Recruitment For ACE Project

The ReACH Lab never slows down! We recently had our M-DCPS workshop in late January, where the ACE Project team presented to M-DCPS teachers, counselors, and administrators to provide the most recent information regarding e-cigarette use in adolescence. Following this workshop, Dr. Trucco and Dr. Sutherland (co-directors of the ACE Project) were invited to multiple middle and high schools to give e-cigarette presentations to students. Dr. Trucco presented at Ferguson High last week, where the school allowed us to recruit students for the ACE Project and we collected 40+ more contact sheets! We are about halfway through Wave 1 of ACE Project data collection but are always looking for more potential families to contact, especially now that Arm B of the ACE Project will be starting soon. Stay tuned for more updates from the ReACH Lab!

20 Feb ReACH Lab RA Selected As McNair Fellow

A huge congratulations is due to our ReACH Lab undergraduate research assistant, Maria Zapata, for being selected as a McNair Fellow. Ms. Zapata provided the following description of the research she will be conducting as a McNair Fellow, as well as a bit of background on herself:

“Attaining the McNair fellowship has been a step closer to my goal of reaching graduate school. This fellowship gives the opportunity to undergraduate students to prepare for doctoral studies through research opportunities and scholarly activities. As a first generation college student, this fellowship has now given me the opportunity to thrive through my segment of society. Currently I am working on an independent project with Dr. Trucco. Aside from being a research assistant in the ReACH lab, my study is focused on social goals and vulnerability to peer influence and adolescent substance use initiation. The study examines four separate models. There are two substances which are electronic cigarettes and cigarettes, and two social goals which are agency and communal. The project is aimed to observe if the association of peer approval/use on each of the substances is moderated by specific social goals. It is hypothesized that adolescents who fall to be greater in agency will be more susceptible to cigarettes, whereas adolescents who fall high in communal will be more susceptible to e-cigarettes. The adolescents in the study will be the high schoolers from the ongoing ACE project. Through my current research experiences and future attainable programs, I expect to be able to reach my career goals and perform exceptionally to be a role model!”

Thanks for making the ReACH Lab proud Maria! We know you will do amazing work as a McNair Fellow!