Publications by authors named "Maureen A Walton"

Article Synopsis
  • Veterans have a heightened risk for substance use and risky sexual behaviors, often as coping mechanisms for trauma.
  • In a study of 834 Veterans seeking therapy, over half reported heavy drinking, and many engaged in unprotected sex, particularly with regular partners.
  • Although risky sexual behaviors were prevalent, they were not directly linked to PTSD symptoms, indicating the need for further research to identify other influencing factors.
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Introduction: Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death for youth/young-adults. We utilized latent class analysis to identify distinct motivational/behavioral patterns of firearm possession in a youth/young-adult emergency department sample to inform prevention strategies.

Methods: Cross-sectional data were obtained from surveys conducted among youth/young-adults (age = 16-29; n = 1311) seeking emergency department treatment (7/10/2017-6/25/2018).

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Background: High-risk alcohol consumption in the weeks before and after surgery poses significant risks for postoperative recovery. Despite this, elective surgical patients are rarely offered alcohol-focused education, interventions, or treatment. This paper describes the protocol of a research study designed to evaluate the effectiveness of brief, non-pharmacological, therapeutic approaches to reduce alcohol use before and after surgery.

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Background: Cannabis consumption has increased in recent years, as has cannabis use disorder. While researchers have explored public online community discussions of active cannabis use, less is known about the popularity and content of publicly available online communities intended to support cannabis cessation.

Objective: This study aims to examine the level of engagement and dominant content of an online community for cannabis cessation through 3 specific aims.

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Background: Adolescent substance use is a growing public health concern, particularly given rising mortality rates from drug overdose deaths. The emergency department (ED) provides a unique opportunity to screen adolescents for substance use and provide brief interventions and linkage to care.

Objective Of The Review: This article provides a narrative review of the current evidence for ED screening and brief interventions for adolescents with substance use and identifies important opportunities, challenges, and areas for future research.

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Article Synopsis
  • Many teens and young adults in the U.S. are using cannabis more often, which can cause health problems and the need for treatment.
  • * Researchers studied how and why people use cannabis, looking at different reasons over time to help make better solutions for cutting down usage in the future.
  • * They found that changes in these reasons can predict future issues, which is important for creating ways to help people stay healthy and use cannabis less.
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Although experiencing violence is a risk factor for substance use among youth, its association with same-day use of multiple substances (a form of polysubstance use) and mitigating factors is less well understood. To identify whether prosocial factors modified the effect of experiencing violence on the frequency of same-day use, and examine gender-specific risk/protective factors for same-day use. We analyzed longitudinal data from a cohort of youth who use drugs aged 14-24 ( = 599; 58% male) presenting to an urban emergency department between 2009-2011 and assessed biannually for two years.

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Background: At-risk alcohol use is associated with increased adverse health consequences, yet is undertreated in healthcare settings. People residing in rural areas need improved access to services; however, few interventions are designed to meet the needs of rural populations. Mobile interventions can provide feasible, low-cost, and scalable means for reaching this population and improving health, and behavioral economic approaches are promising.

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Aims: High-intensity drinking (HID) is a pattern of risky drinking defined as at least 8 drinks (for women) or 10 drinks (for men) in a single episode. Individuals engaged in HID may be at greater risk for consequences, necessitating tailored interventions. Herein, we report the feasibility and acceptability of a social media-delivered 8-week intervention for emerging adults with recent HID.

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Background: Perceived risk of harm associated with cannabis use has decreased in recent decades, particularly among emerging adults who show the highest prevalence of use. Cannabis-related protective behavioral strategies (PBS) are associated with lower cannabis use and fewer consequences; however, individuals who perceive using cannabis as low risk may use cannabis PBS less often. Therefore, using cross-sectional data, we examined the associations between perceived risk of harm associated with cannabis use, cannabis PBS, and cannabis use frequency.

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Increased access to information online (e.g., social media) provides opportunities for exposure to rape myths (i.

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Introduction: Interventions addressing cannabis use among emerging adults (ages 18-25) are currently needed to prevent negative outcomes. Emergency Department (ED) visits provide an opportunity to initiate interventions. In this pilot study, we created a brief intervention (BI), extended with private social media messaging for emerging adult ED patients who use cannabis regularly.

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Background: Emerging adults' (EAs; ages 18-25) perceived risk of cannabis-related harms has decreased in recent decades, potentially contributing to their high prevalence of cannabis consumption. With the changing cannabis policy and product landscape, it is critical to understand perceived risk related to different consumption methods (e.g.

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Objective: Violence is a leading cause of death among individuals ages 18-25, with alcohol misuse consistently linked with violence perpetration. However, the association between polysubstance use and violence perpetration is less clear, despite the frequency of use of alcohol with other drugs. Additionally, protective factors such as mindfulness that may reduce violence perpetration among emerging adults have been understudied.

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We aim to review the association between childhood-onset mental health conditions and increased risk for early substance use including opioid misuse and opioid use disorders (OUD). The association between mental health conditions and opioid misuse suggests youth with mental health conditions may benefit from opioid prevention efforts that concurrently address mental health. To aid in the identification of youth with mental health conditions who could benefit from interventions, we will review opportunities and challenges associated with screening for mental health symptoms or substance use in settings where youth at high risk for mental health conditions present.

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Alcohol use and violent behaviors among youth are associated with morbidity and mortality. An emergency department (ED) visit provides an opportunity to initiate prevention efforts. Despite promising findings from our single session SafERteens brief intervention (BI), impact is limited by modest effect sizes, with data lacking on optimal boosters to enhance effects.

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Advances in mobile and wireless technologies offer tremendous opportunities for extending the reach and impact of psychological interventions and for adapting interventions to the unique and changing needs of individuals. However, insufficient engagement remains a critical barrier to the effectiveness of digital interventions. Human delivery of interventions (e.

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Gamification, the application of gaming elements to increase enjoyment and engagement, has the potential to improve the effectiveness of digital health interventions, while the effectiveness of competition gamification components remains poorly understood on residency. To address this gap, we evaluate the effect of smartphone-based gamified team competition intervention on daily step count and sleep duration via a micro-randomized trial on medical interns. Our aim is to assess potential improvements in the factors (namely step count and sleep) that may help interns cope with stress and improve well-being.

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Background: Factors related to risky drinking (e.g., motives, protective behavioral strategies [PBS]) may vary between youth who engage in polysubstance use compared to those who consume alcohol only.

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Purpose: Cannabis use is common among emerging adults (ages 18-25), yet few prevention interventions have targeted this unique developmental period. Physical activity (PA) is an under-utilized intervention target for cannabis use, despite research showing its potential utility. Based on prior promising social media-delivered interventions targeting cannabis and PA separately, we developed and piloted, in a randomized controlled feasibility trial (NCT04901910), interventions for emerging adults who use cannabis that focused on PA.

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Firearm possession increases the likelihood of hospital visits among adolescents and emerging adults for both males and females. To better inform prevention practices, we examine data among adolescents and emerging adults (A/EAs; ages 16 to 29) presenting to an urban emergency department for any reason to understand the differences in firearm possession between males and females (N = 1312; 29.6% male; 50.

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Firearms are the leading cause of death for high-school age teens. To inform prevention efforts, we characterize the prevalence of healthcare provider (HCP) counseling of caregivers of teens around firearm safety, safety conversation elements, and caregiver receptivity towards counseling. A cross-sectional web survey (6/24/2020-7/22/2020) was conducted among caregivers (n = 2924) of teens (age:14-18).

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Same-day alcohol and cannabis use is relatively common in adolescents and young adults, constituting a higher-risk behavior relative to single-substance use. However, the association between quantity of alcohol and cannabis use on co-use days is understudied. We examined the association between the quantity of alcohol and same-day cannabis use with a multilevel regression analysis in a sample of youth (16-24 years old) with risky alcohol use.

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The Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Prevention Cooperative (HPC) is rapidly developing 10 distinct evidence-based interventions for implementation in a variety of settings to prevent opioid misuse and opioid use disorder. One HPC objective is to compare intervention impacts on opioid misuse initiation, escalation, severity, and disorder and identify whether any HPC interventions are more effective than others for types of individuals. It provides a rare opportunity to prospectively harmonize measures across distinct outcomes studies.

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Purpose: Alcohol use among adolescents and emerging adults is an important public health issue requiring prevention approaches. Herein, we describe outcomes from a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of group-based social media interventions targeting risky drinking among youth.

Procedures: Using social media advertisements to screen potential participants, we recruited 955 youth (ages 16-24) reporting recent risky drinking.

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