Theory, Measurement, and Psychometric Properties of Risk and Protective Factors for Drug Misuse Among Adolescents Living on or near the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

A team of tribe-based behavioral health specialists and university-based researchers partnered to implement a cluster randomized trial for the prevention of drug misuse among adolescents attending public high schools on or near the Cherokee Nation Reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. The conceptual framework, which guided intervention and measurement design for the trial, incorporates indigenous knowledge and worldviews with empirically-based frameworks and evidence-based practices. Our goal is to serve multicultural youth, families, and schools and to provide a model of effective strategies for wide dissemination.

Adolescent Advertising Exposure to Cannabis Products in Rural Oklahoma via Medical Dispensaries.

Objective: We assess cannabis advertising exposure among adolescents in rural Oklahoma from medical dispensaries.

Method: Our mixed-methods study identified medical dispensaries within a 15-minute drive time of rural Oklahoma high schools. Study staff completed observational data collection forms and took photographs of each dispensary.

Study protocol for a cluster randomized trial of a school, family, and community intervention for preventing drug misuse among older adolescents in the Cherokee Nation.

Background: The national opioid crisis has disproportionately burdened rural White populations and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations. Therefore, Cherokee Nation and Emory University public health scientists have designed an opioid prevention trial to be conducted in rural communities in the Cherokee Nation (northeast Oklahoma) with AI and other (mostly White) adolescents and young adults. Our goal is to implement and evaluate a theory-based, integrated multi-level community intervention designed to prevent the onset and escalation of opioid and other drug misuse.

Anti-poverty policy and health: Attributes and diffusion of state earned income tax credits across U.S. states from 1980 to 2020.

Purpose: The U.S. federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is often considered the most effective antipoverty program for families in the U.

Effects of State-Level Earned Income Tax Credit Laws on Birth Outcomes by Race and Ethnicity.

Health disparities persist in birth outcomes by mother's income, education, and race in the United States. Disadvantaged mothers may experience benefit from supplements to family income, such as the earned income tax credit (EITC). We examined the effects of state-level EITCs on birth outcomes among women with a high school education or less, stratified by race and ethnicity.

Effects of changes in earned income tax credit: Time-series analyses of Washington DC.

Poverty has numerous deleterious effects on health, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the major policy tool used to alleviate poverty in the U.S. We evaluate effects of four distinct changes in earned income tax credit law in Washington, DC on maternal behaviors and infant outcomes.

Alcohol retail sales licenses and sexually transmitted infections in Texas counties, 2008-2015.

Background: Research suggests that reduced retail alcohol outlet density may be associated with lower prevalence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). On-premise sale of alcohol for immediate consumption is theorized as increasing social interactions that can lead to sexual encounters.

Objective: We examined associations between on- and off-premise retail alcohol sales licenses and number of newly diagnosed HIV and STI cases in Texas counties.

Effects of Alcohol Interventions on Other Drug Use in the Cherokee Nation.

Objectives: To evaluate effects of 2 alcohol prevention interventions-Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA), a community organizing intervention designed to reduce youth alcohol access, and CONNECT, an individual-level screening and brief intervention approach-on other drug use outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a community intervention trial with quarterly surveys over 3 years (2012-2015) of high school students living within the jurisdictional service area of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. We used generalized estimating equations and linear probability models to examine intervention spillover effects on other drug use.

Communities mobilizing for change on alcohol (CMCA): secondary analyses of a randomized controlled trial showing effects of community organizing on alcohol acquisition by youth in the Cherokee nation.

Aims: We evaluated the effects of a community organizing intervention, Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA), on the propensity of retail alcohol outlets to sell alcohol to young buyers without age identification and on alcohol acquisition behaviors of underage youth.

Design: Random assignment of community to treatment (n = 3) or control (n = 2). Student surveys were conducted four times per year for 3 years; the cohort was in 9th and 10th grades in the 2012-13 academic year.

Effects of state-level Earned Income Tax Credit laws in the U.S. on maternal health behaviors and infant health outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of state-level Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) laws in the U.S. on maternal health behaviors and infant health outcomes.

Recreational Cannabis Legalization and Opioid-Related Deaths in Colorado, 2000-2015.

Objectives: To examine the association between Colorado's legalization of recreational cannabis use and opioid-related deaths.

Methods: We used an interrupted time-series design (2000-2015) to compare changes in level and slope of monthly opioid-related deaths before and after Colorado stores began selling recreational cannabis. We also describe the percent change in opioid-related deaths by comparing the unadjusted model-smoothed number of deaths at the end of follow-up with the number of deaths just prior to legalization.

Multilevel Prevention Trial of Alcohol Use Among American Indian and White High School Students in the Cherokee Nation.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of a multilevel intervention designed to prevent underage alcohol use among youths living in the Cherokee Nation.

Methods: We randomly assigned 6 communities to a control, Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA; a community-organizing intervention targeting alcohol access) only, CONNECT (a school-based universal screening and brief intervention) only, or a combined condition. We collected quarterly surveys 2012-2015 from students starting in 9th and 10th grades and ending in 11th and 12th grades.

The Effect of an Increased Minimum Wage on Infant Mortality and Birth Weight.

Objectives: To investigate the effects of state minimum wage laws on low birth weight and infant mortality in the United States.

Methods: We estimated the effects of state-level minimum wage laws using a difference-in-differences approach on rates of low birth weight (< 2500 g) and postneonatal mortality (28-364 days) by state and month from 1980 through 2011. All models included state and year fixed effects as well as state-specific covariates.

Research design issues for evaluating complex multicomponent interventions in neighborhoods and communities.

Major advances in population health will not occur unless we translate existing knowledge into effective multicomponent interventions, implement and maintain these in communities, and develop rigorous translational research and evaluation methods to ensure continual improvement and sustainability. We discuss challenges and offer approaches to evaluation that are key for translational research stages 3 to 5 to advance optimized adoption, implementation, and maintenance of effective and replicable multicomponent strategies. The major challenges we discuss concern (a) multiple contexts of evaluation/research, (b) complexity of packages of interventions, and (c) phases of evaluation/research questions.

The wellness incentives and navigation project: design and methods.

Background: About 35 % of non-elderly U.S. adult Medicaid enrollees have a behavioral health condition, such as anxiety, mood disorders, substance use disorders, and/or serious mental illness.

Maryland Alcohol Sales Tax and Sexually Transmitted Infections: A Natural Experiment.

Introduction: Sexually transmitted infections are common causes of morbidity and mortality, including infertility and certain types of cancer. Alcohol tax increases may decrease sexually transmitted infection rates overall and differentially across population subgroups by decreasing alcohol consumption in general and prior to sex, thus decreasing sexual risk taking and sexually transmitted infection acquisition. This study investigated the effects of a Maryland increase in alcohol beverage sales tax on statewide gonorrhea and chlamydia rates overall and within age, gender, and race/ethnicity subpopulations.

Commentary on the 2015 SPR Standards of Evidence.

We comment on the 2015 Society for Prevention Research standards of evidence document, summarizing major changes from the previous 2005 Standards, and point to ways in which the Standards could be further improved. We endorse important new standards, such as those on testing the causal theory and mechanisms of the intervention, improved trial reporting standards, and added attention to scale-up research and cost analyses. Despite discussion of replication in the new Standards, we are concerned about the lack of stand-alone replication standards, and the deletion of an explicit requirement for replication before an intervention is considered efficacious.

Alcohol Sales to Youth: Data from Rural Communities Within the Cherokee Nation.

Access to alcohol among individuals under 21 years of age continues to be a public health concern with approximately 5000 youth deaths attributable to alcohol each year (US Department of Health and Human Services 2007). To date, there is no research on youth access to alcohol from commercial sources within rural communities with large populations of Native American families. We evaluated commercial access to alcohol by underage-appearing female confederates in 4 rural towns within the Cherokee Nation, a non-reservation tribal jurisdiction that includes a high proportion of Native Americans embedded within a predominately White population.

High Alcohol Concentration Products Associated With Poverty and State Alcohol Policies.

Objectives: We examined the associations among zip code demographics, the state alcohol policy environment, and the retail outlet availability of multiple fruit-flavored alcoholic drinks in a can (MFAC).

Methods: In a nationally representative sample of zip codes (n = 872), we merged data from 4 sources: publicly available marketing information from 2 major MFAC producers, the US Census Bureau, state alcohol regulatory agencies, and recent research on state alcohol policies. We used zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to examine MFAC outlet availability in the United States.