From Synapse to Society: Rural Drug Addiction Research Center to Study Rural Drug Use, Causes, and Impacts

By Rick Bevins, Chancellor’s Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behavior Program

Rick Bevins, Department of Psychology Chair
Rick Bevins

A University of Nebraska research team led by Sociology professor Kirk Dombrowski (Center Director, University of Nebraska—Lincoln (UNL)), Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience professor Shilpa Buch (Associate Director, University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC)) and myself (Associate Director, UNL) has recently been awarded a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health - National Institute of General Medical Sciences that will fund the creation of the Rural Drug Addiction Research (RDAR) Center. Including myself, this new center will heavily involve the talents of four faculty in the Psychology Department.

Two psychology faculty are among four early career scholars that will implement projects on the neuroscience of addiction, the cognitive implications of chronic drug use, the relationship between rural drug use and violence exposure, and the simulation of drug-related disease epidemiology. An additional psychology faculty member is a project mentor. Trey Andrews, Assistant Professor of psychology, will lead a project that examines the role of violence exposure on stress regulation, craving, and substance use disparities. David DiLillo, Willa Cather Professor of psychology, serves as a mentor in this project. Matt Johnson, Assistant Professor of psychology, will lead a project exploring whether drug abuse outcomes can be predicted from cognitive performance and cognitive neuroscience data; this project is being mentored by me and by James Blair, Ph.D., Susan and George Haddix Endowed Chair in Neurobehavioral Research at the Boy’s Town National Research Hospital.

The RDAR Center is dedicated to understanding the causes and impacts of rural drug addiction and its related challenges and harms. The new center will advance drug addiction science by linking pre-clinical studies to field-based research. RDAR Center projects will build significant research capacity in Nebraska and make strides towards addressing a serious and costly national health issue.

To support these projects, RDAR Center is founding the Longitudinal Networks Core (LNC) Facility, led by Sociology Professor Bilal Khan (Core co-Director, UNL) and Sociology Professor Kimberly Tyler (Core co-Director, UNL). The LNC will recruit and retain 600 participants for the Rural Health Cohort (RHC) Study from rural regions in the Great Plains. In addition to longitudinal health and addiction surveillance, the RHC study will provide access to research subjects for specialized RDAR Center projects for the next five years.

To accomplish these long-term goals, the RHC will utilize mobile technology that captures responsive Ecological Momentary Assessment (rEMA) data via the Open Dynamic Interaction Network (ODIN) cellphone software platform. ODIN will anonymously track the social network interactions of RHC study participants and ask researcher-designed questions of participants throughout their day.

The RDAR Center will draw on the following existing resources across campuses:

  • Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior (UNL)
  • Behavioral Neuropharmacology Laboratory (UNL)
  • Holland Computing Center (UNL)
  • REACH Laboratory (UNL)
  • Chronic Infection and Aging in NeuroAIDS Center (UNMC)
  • Biomedical and Obesity Research Core (UNL)
  • Great Plains Center for Clinical and Translational Research (UNMC)
  • Minority Health Disparities Initiative (UNL)
  • Social Networks Research Group (UNL)

Altogether, center-sponsored projects will range from the microscopic world of the synapse in human biology to the social and geographical environments in which drug use interventions take place, exploring rural drug addiction from synapse to society.