NORFOLK — A study at Old Dominion University could change the landscape of alcohol addiction recovery, as the school’s psychology department seeks funding to research the benefits of a computerized intervention program.
Associate professor Dr. Cathy Lau-Barraco serves as the primary investigator of a multi-phase study that she began in 2010. The research focused on alcoholism among young adults between 18 and 25 who are not students.
According to the abstract of the project featured with the National Institutes of Health, non-student, young adults were classified as a group that is at higher long-term risk for developing alcohol use disorders.
“There has been a lot of research and a lot of intervention programs out there that target the drinking of college students, but what we’re finding is that those who don’t go on to college also experience heavy drinking and frequent drinking and are experiencing alcohol-related consequences from drinking,” she said.
Research findings featured on ODU’s website, reported that the frequency and quantity of daily alcohol use is higher for the non-college young people than their student peers.
Lau-Barraco received a five-year, $750,000 grant in 2010 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to study the effects of brief personalized interventions among the target group.
The NIAAA is one of 27 institutes within the National Institutes of Health and is one of the largest funders of alcohol-related research in the world.
The initial study, which ended in June 2016, conducted a series of 60-minute, personalized feedback interventions with volunteers.
Participants were assessed individually based on their drinking habits and were given information on the consequences of their drinking.
“We provide data about the risks across the different domains,” Lau-Barraco said.
Each session covered information like how much a participant spent on alcohol each week, the number of calories they were consuming while drinking, and the eventual health issues they could end up with if their habit’s persisted.
Following their interventions, volunteers were monitored for a month to see any changes in behavior.
“What we actually found from the data in that study is that we were able to successfully reduce their drinking over the short term,” Lau-Barraco said. “When we followed them from baseline to one month, following when they got the intervention, we saw they significantly decreased their drinking over that one month.”
The next step Lau-Barraco and her team are aiming for is developing what they believe would be a more convenient intervention program for young adults looking for help.
The research group began conducting a follow-up pilot study at the start of 2017 to gauge the possibility of developing a computerized intervention program that would yield similar results as their initial study.
“Since we don’t have the grant money to really develop this online intervention, we then, instead, used what was already out there to show that it was feasible and that we can get people to take it,” Lau-Barraco said. “We also solicit the feedback about the different components of the intervention program.”
As part of the pilot study, volunteers are asked to use a similar program known as eCHECKUP TO GO, which is a computerized behavior intervention program designed by psychologists at San Diego State University and the University of Texas.
The online program has been used on hundreds of college campuses across four countries.
Using the data from their five-year study and feedback from current volunteers the plan is to tailor the intervention format with hopes of receiving funding from the NIAAA once again, Lau-Barraco added.
According to Lau-Barraco, the pilot study will be coming to a close by the end of July as she and her team await word on their grant application from the NIAAA.
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