Reach News

11 Apr ACE Project Researchers Host Webinar on E-cigarettes for Miami Southridge Senior High School

ACE Project graduate students, Benjelene Sutherland and Nilo Fallah-Sohy, recently hosted a webinar on e-cigarette use with support from ACE Project program coordinator, Nasreen Hidmi, and Senior research assistant, Brigitte Madan. The webinar provided information on the current rate of e-cigarette use among teens, misconceptions about e-cigarettes, and the potential risks of vaping on teens and the developing brain. With the alarming increase in rates of e-cigarette use, such outreach efforts are critical in preventing youth from initiating use and in raising awareness over health risks. Over 170 Miami Southridge Senior High School students attended the live webinar, each receiving one hour of community service for their time. Contact sheets were collected from students who expressed interest in participating in the ACE Project study.

The Southridge e-cigarette webinar is part of a larger series of community engagements that is being launched by the ACE Project. Prior to COVID-19, the ACE project team would regularly conduct speaking engagements at partner schools, in order to gather participants for the study. This new initiative makes an effort to re-engage with our community and partner schools, in order to increase participation in the re-launch of the cross-sectional portion of the ACE Project. The ACE Project team is excited to continue this initiative with partner schools in the coming months. 

01 Apr ReACH Lab Graduate Student Earns Perfect Score on Grant Submission

Congratulations to ReACH Lab 4th year graduate student, Julie Cristello, for earning a perfect score (impact score of 10 / percentile 1%) on her Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F31) submission to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This grant aims to support and facilitate the necessary training to develop an independent research career focused on examining online and offline social contexts that influence adolescent substance use. In the long-term, Julie seeks to develop a program of research focused on the use of digital technologies to examine social risk factors that lead to alcohol and drug use among adolescents and to deliver prevention programming. Through the grant, Julie aims to be trained in state-of-the-art quantitative methodologies to enhance the design, conduct, and analysis of big data to improve our current understanding of socialization effects on adolescent SU.

Julie’s work aims to address the understudied area of research relating to social media use and adolescent substance use, and aims to address limitations in the field by focusing on an adolescent population and using a more popular social media platform (i.e., Instagram). Aim 1 of the proposed project will use secondary data analyses from the ongoing ACE Project to determine whether SU attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control mediate the prospective association between exposure to SU-related content posted by peers and influential figures on offline SU behaviors. Aim 2 will collect original data, and will prospectively examine the association between online user-generated e-cigarette content on Instagram and offline e-cigarette use using a novel methodological approach. Machine learning algorithms will be developed to detect e-cigarette content on Instagram profiles, and will be compared to self-report data to assess whether the strength of this association varies based on approach.

Through this project, Julie aims to increase knowledge of adolescent SU behaviors that are not visible offline that could uniquely inform prevention programs by identifying modifiable targets for intervention that are relevant for today’s youth.

26 Mar Study Finds That Children Allowed to Sip Alcohol Start to See Alcohol More Favorably

A 2021 study found that 22% of children aged 9-11 have sipped alcohol from their parent’s drinks—typically from their father and most frequently beer. As such, the act of allowing children to sip alcohol seems to be common and harmless in most households, but research is proving that it may be negatively affecting children’s outlook on alcohol. In the study, adolescents who sipped alcohol were more likely to agree with statements that favored alcohol drinking, such as “alcohol makes people want to have fun together” and “alcohol helps a person relax, feel happy, feel less tense, and can keep a person’s mind off of mistakes at school or work.” 

These findings were highlighted in a recent TODAY article, which reviewed the current state of adolescent substance use research, in terms of parent’s allowance of alcohol sipping. Joshua Gray, an addiction researcher and assistant professor at Uniformed Services University in Maryland, was interviewed for the TODAY article. He states that “Bottom line, parents should not be giving their kids sips of alcohol. Those who’ve had a sip are more likely to report thinking that alcohol has positive effects, and that’s important because we know that the thoughts about the effects of alcohol are related to starting up drinking and ultimately drinking more heavily.” According to the researcher, those initial sips of alcohol can play a critical role in altering a child’s thought process when it comes to alcohol. The TODAY article makes mention of previous studies which shed light on parental behaviors, in which parents believe that allowing their children to sip booze lessens the appeal of alcohol. However, as research on the topic continues to emerge, we are finding that this sentiment may not hold true.

11 Mar ACE Project Featured in Article Addressing COVID-19’s Impact on Latinx E-Cigarette Use

ReACH Lab Director and ACE Project Co-PI Dr. Elisa Trucco has recently shared her research findings in an article by PantherNow—a student-run media blog at Florida International University. The article highlights an ongoing ACE Project research study, which is investigating the impact of COVID-19 on teenage e-cigarette use and mental health. 

According to Florida Youth Tobacco Survey (FYTS), adolescent e-cigarette use in Florida has increased by 78% since 2014, with 36.5% of Floridian high school students reporting use in 2020. As such, Dr. Trucco reminds us that “South Florida’s e-cigarette use [is] significantly higher than the national average, and we do see a higher rate of use within Latinx youth.” 

Despite this increase in overall e-cigarette use, there was a drop in Latinx teenage use during the COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID has perhaps been protective in terms of substance abuse, but what we do see is that it has significantly increased stress, anxiety, and depression” explains Dr. Trucco. “Some of our work suggests that increased exposure to COVID related news and increasing CDC guidelines has led to a reduction in what teens view to be their quality of life.” This increase in mental health ailments can have long-term consequences for teens, as stress, anxiety, and depression have all been linked to adolescent substance use. 

The transition to in-person classes in South Florida could possibly exacerbate the mental health impact of the pandemic. Dr. Trucco states that “once restrictions loosen up, and students go back to school, what you’re going to see is an uptick in substance use, as a way to cope with some of these elevations in mental health problems.”

The ACE project is continuing to collect COVID-19 data throughout the year of 2021. ACE researchers aim to provide insight into the pandemic’s impact on Latinx substance use, and to inform prevention efforts by educating parents and school leaders. 

06 Mar ReACH Lab Makes Headlines Discussing Ongoing COVID-19 Project

01 Mar ReACH Lab Members Accepted to CPA Conference

Congratulations are in order for ReACH Lab Graduate Students Julie Cristello and Sarah Hartmann and ReACH Lab Intern Nathalie del Valle after being accepted to the Collaborative Perspectives on Addiction (CPA) 2021 Virtual Conference!

Julie will be presenting her poster titled “Injunctive Norms as a Mediator Between Alcohol and Marijuana Instagram Exposure and Use Intentions”, which found that perceived friend approval significantly mediated the associations between exposure to Instagram content by peers and influential figures and alcohol and marijuana use intentions. 

Sarah will be presenting her poster titled “The Use of Cognitive Interviews to Aid in the Development of a Measure to Assess Quantity and Frequency of Adolescent E-Cigarette Use”, which, using data from phase 1 of cognitive interviews, found that current pictures of e-cigarette products are outdated and that some terms specific to e-cigarettes are unfamiliar to participants. Phase 2 of the interviews will include measure refinements that will address these issues and help provide accurate assessment of adolescent e-cigarette quantity and frequency of use.

Nathalie will be presenting her poster titled “Examining Caregiver-Adolescent Rule-Breaking Discrepancies as a Mediator in the Association Between Parental Monitoring and Adolescent E-Cigarette Use”, which found that as parental knowledge and child disclosure decrease, the discrepancy size increases, and as the discrepancy increases, adolescent e-cigarette use increases.

Congratulations to these three lab members on their exciting research findings and acceptances!

08 Feb ReACH Lab Director, Alongside ReACH Lab Graduate Student, Publish Article on Cancer Prevention Pricing Interventions

ReACH LAB Director, Dr. Elisa Trucco, alongside ReACH Lab Graduate Student, Julie Cristello, M.S., and colleagues at East Carolina University, University of Glasgow, University College London, and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have published an article titled “Message framing to inform cancer prevention pricing interventions in the UK and US: A factorial experiment, 2019”. The investigators aimed to advance research in message framing, and how this can maximize public support to change pricing policies for alcohol, tobacco, and sugary drinks/food, in the hopes of preventing consumption of cancer-causing products. The field of message framing “suggests that how information is presented changes how it is received and interpreted,” with support indicating that message framing can play an important role in implementation of policy changes. The study used samples drawn from both the UK and US population and was evenly split across the two countries and sex, with a total of 1,805 participants included in the study. The study prompted participants to answer questions regarding policies on alcohol, tobacco, and sugary food/drink products. The first finding of the study found that none of the three policies tested (taxes, minimum pricing, and getting rid of discounts) had an impact on public support for the three products. The study did find frames relating to children showed promise, suggesting that mentioning or including children in the message regarding policy had higher levels of support. There was also evidence that messages about tobacco products resulted in more support for raising the price of products compared to alcohol or sugary drinks/food. These results “may indicate that efforts to ‘denormalize’ tobacco products have yet to translate to alcohol and sugary drinks/foods efforts,” and furthermore are significant for public health policy advocates, who should consider framing messages focused on protecting children and learning from efforts to address tobacco use. The results of this study highlights the importance of “bridging the research-practice gap” between research on message framing and how advocacy groups message to the public. 

25 Jan ACE Project Joins Panel Discussion about Recruiting Study Participants During COVID-19

On January 15th, 2021, ACE Project Program Coordinator, Nasreen Hidmi, participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Departments of Dietetics and Nutrition and Epidemiology of Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work, FIU Research Center in Minority Institutions (FIU-RCMI), and Center for Research on U.S Latino HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse (CRUSADA). The topic of the Panel Discussion was about recruiting study participants during the COVID-19 pandemic. 13 panelists each held 5-minute presentations on different research studies at FIU, discussing their greatest challenges in recruiting study participants in the context of COVID-19 and on their successful strategies/adjustments implemented in response to these challenges to over 90 attendees. Nasreen discussed three main components of the ACE project that involved in-person interactions with participants prior to COVID-19 and how they have been adapted. High school presentations and questionnaire visits are now being completed remotely over Zoom. Given that MRI appointments need to be completed in person, new procedures have been implemented at the Center for Imaging Science (CIS) following CDC recommendations to maintain safety. Participants undergo a rigorous screening process prior to being invited to campus. Staff meet participants at their vehicle to complete temperature checks and provide masks and sanitizer. In addition, the center is thoroughly sanitized in between visits and only one family is able to enter the center at a time for the MRI visit. The ACE team has implemented many new strategies to ensure their participant retention remains at maximum level. The full panel discussion can be viewed here.

12 Jan ReACH Lab Members Accepted to Present at SRCD and SRA Conferences

Congratulations are in order for a large portion of the ReACH Lab! ACE Project Graduate Research Assistant, Benjelene Sutherland, ACE Project Senior Research Assistant, Brigitte Madan, and ReACH Lab Manager and Research Assistant, Michelle Villar, have all been accepted to virtually present at the Society for Research on Adolescence’s 2021 conference. Benjelene will present her poster titled “The Synergistic Effect of Low Self‐Control and Internalizing Symptoms on Adolescent Electronic Cigarette Use Intentions”, Brigitte will present her poster titled “Outcome Expectancies Mediate the Impact of Hopelessness and Impulsivity on E‐Cigarette use Intentions” and Michelle will present her posters titled “Anxiety Mediates the Association Between Neural Emotional Responsivity and Problem Alcohol Use in Adolescence” and “Internalizing Pathways to Adolescent Substance Use from Adverse Childhood Experiences”. 

Additionally, ReACH Lab Graduate Students Julie Cristello, Nilofar Fallah-Sohy, and Sarah Hartmann, as well as ReACH Lab Manager and Research Assistant Michelle Villar and ReACH Lab Post-Bac Research Assistant Maria Zapata, have been accepted to the Society for Research in Child Development’s 2021 virtual conference. Julie will be presenting a poster titled “Can Caregiver Smartphone use Predict Child and Caregiver Mental Health? An Application of Machine Learning” as well as a paper written with Nilofar titled “Do Adolescent and Caregiver Media use Moderate the Association Between COVID-19 Fears and Adolescent Anxiety?” Nilofar will also be presenting her own paper titled “Do Acculturative Gap Conflicts Impact Parenting Practices and Youth E-Cigarette Use? Tests of Moderated Mediation”, while Sarah will present her paper titled “Risk Factors for Adolescent Substance Use: Dimensions and Typologies of Temperament.” Michelle will be presenting a paper titled “Adverse Childhood Experiences, Sleep Problems, Low Self-Control, and Delinquency: A Longitudinal Serial Mediation Analysis” while Maria will be presenting her paper titled “Social Goals Moderate the Relation Between Friend Use and Approval and Adolescent Intentions to Initiate Substance Use.”

A great way to start off the new year ReACH Lab! 

18 Dec ReACH Lab Graduate Student Featured as Panelist on Research Society on Alcoholism Webinar

ReACH Lab 4th-year graduate student, Julie Cristello, was featured as a panelist for the “Interviewing Skills” webinar hosted by the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA). The RSA webinar featured a wide range of panelists and offered general interviewing tips for potential graduate school applicants. Panelists were prompted to answer questions such as “How should interviewees handle being asked the same/similar questions by multiple interviewers in a day?” or “What should interviewees expect for a virtual interview? How should they prepare for virtual interviews and what kinds of questions should they ask given that they are missing out on the “live” interview experience?”

To learn more about the Research Society on Alcoholism, please visit their website.