Publications by authors named "Morgan Lopez"

Retention of early career teachers is a critical issue in education, with burnout and self-efficacy serving as important precursors to teachers leaving the field. An integration of the PAX Good Behavior Game (GBG; Barrish et al., 1969) and MyTeachingPartner (MTP; Allen et al.

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High rates of cannabis use among people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have raised questions about the efficacy of evidence-based PTSD treatments for individuals reporting cannabis use, particularly those with co-occurring alcohol or other substance use disorders (SUDs). Using a subset of four randomized clinical trials (RCTs) included in Project Harmony, an individual patient meta-analysis of 36 RCTs (total N = 4046) of treatments for co-occurring PTSD+SUD, we examined differences in trauma-focused (TF) and non-trauma-focused (non-TF) treatment outcomes for individuals who did and did not endorse baseline cannabis use (N = 410; 70% male; 33.2% endorsed cannabis use).

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A large body of research demonstrates positive impacts of the Coping Power Program as a preventive intervention for youth behavioral outcomes, but potential collateral effects for caregivers is less known. The current study examined whether the youth-focused Coping Power Program can have a secondary impact on caregiver self-reported symptoms of depression and in turn result in longer-term impacts on child disruptive behavior problems including aggression, conduct problems and hyperactivity. Data from 360 youth/caregiver pairs across 8 waves of data (grades 4 through 10) were analyzed.

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We conducted a systematic review and network meta-analyses (NMA) of psychotherapy and pharmacologic treatments for individuals with co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol or other drug use disorder (AOD). A comprehensive search spanning 1995-2019 yielded a pool of 39 studies for systematic review, including 24 randomized controlled trials for the NMA. Study interventions were grouped by target of treatment (PTSD + AOD, PTSD-only, and AOD-only) and approach (psychotherapy or medication).

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This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of Prevention Science entitled, "Innovations and Applications of Integrative Data Analysis (IDA) and Related Data Harmonization Procedures in Prevention Science." This special issue includes a collection of original papers from multiple disciplines that apply individual-level data synthesis methodologies, including IDA, individual participant meta-analysis, and other related methods to harmonize and integrate multiple datasets from intervention trials of the same or similar interventions. This work builds on a series of papers appearing in a prior Prevention Science special issue, entitled "Who Benefits from Programs to Prevent Adolescent Depression?" (Howe, Pantin, & Perrino, 2018).

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Background: Cocaine overdose death rates among Black people are higher than that of any other racial/ethnic group, attributable to synthetic opioids in the cocaine supply. Understanding the most effective psychostimulant use treatment interventions for Black people is a high priority. While some interventions have proven effective for the general population, their comparative effectiveness among Black people remains unknown.

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Background: More than half a million Americans died of an opioid-related overdose between 1999 and 2020, the majority occurring between 2015 and 2020. The opioid overdose mortality epidemic disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC): since 2015, overdose mortality rates have increased substantially more among Black (114%) and Latinx (97%) populations compared with White populations (32%). This is in part due to disparities in access to naloxone, an opioid antagonist that can effectively reverse opioid overdose to prevent death.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study challenges the assumption that all PTSD symptoms are equally important for diagnosing the disorder, finding that some symptoms carry more weight than others.
  • The research analyzed data from 2,658 individuals, using both traditional clinical interviews and new statistical methods to establish a more accurate PTSD diagnosis.
  • Results showed that 25% of patients had a PTSD diagnosis that didn't match their actual symptom severity, particularly affecting veterans, indicating that improved diagnostic standards could help better identify and treat PTSD.
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While integrative data analysis (IDA) presents great opportunity, it also necessitates a myriad of methodological decisions related to harmonizing disparate measures collected across multiple studies. There is a lack of step-by-step methodological guidance for harmonizing disparate measures of latent constructs differently conceptualized or operationalized across studies, such as social, emotional, and behavioral constructs often utilized in prevention science. The current paper addressed this gap by providing methodological guidance and a case illustration focused on harmonizing measures of disparately conceptualized and operationalized constructs.

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Background: Self-report measures are important in substance use assessment, yet they are susceptible to reporting errors. Urine drug screens (UDS) are often considered a more valid alternative. However, collecting in-person UDS may not always be feasible, contributing to the need to understand factors that influence the validity of self-reported substance use.

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Twenty years of CO, CH and CO greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration measurements at Finokalia station on Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean region are presented. This dataset is the longest in the Eastern Mediterranean, based on bi-weekly grab sampling since 2002 and continuous observations since June 2014. CO concentrations increase by 2.

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Objective: Treatment efficacy for co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders is well established, yet direct evidence for comparative effectiveness across treatments is lacking. The present study compared the effectiveness of several behavioral and pharmacological therapies for adults with co-occurring PTSD and alcohol or other drug use disorders.

Methods: A systematic search of PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and ClinicalTrials.

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Carbonyl sulfide (COS) fluxes simulated by vegetation and soil component models, both implemented in the ORCHIDEE land surface model, were evaluated against field observations at two agroecosystems in central France. The dynamics of a biogenic process not yet accounted for by this model, i.e.

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Introduction: High social-emotional functioning, including emotion regulation and nonviolent conflict resolution, constitute developmental competencies of adolescence that promote health and well-being. We used prospective longitudinal data from a predominantly Latinx population to understand how family context and social environment risk factors for violence related to patterns of social-emotional functioning during the transition between middle school and high school.

Methods: We prospectively interviewed 599 8th graders every 6 months for 2 years.

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Psychiatric epidemiologists, developmental psychopathologists, prevention scientists, and treatment researchers have long speculated that treating child anxiety disorders could prevent alcohol and other drug use disorders in young adulthood. A primary challenge in examining long-term effects of anxiety disorder treatment from randomized controlled trials is that all participants receive an immediate or delayed study-related treatment prior to long-term follow-up assessment. Thus, if a long-term follow-up is conducted, a comparison condition no longer exists within the trial.

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In randomized control trials (RCTs), a focus on average differences between treatment arms often limits our understanding of whether individuals show clinically significant improvement or deterioration. The present study examined differences in individual-level clinical significance trajectories between Concurrent Treatment of PTSD and Substance Use Disorders Using Prolonged Exposure (COPE) and Relapse Prevention (RP). Eighty-one treatment-seeking veterans with a comorbid PTSD/SUD diagnosis were randomized to COPE or RP; data from an additional n = 48 patients who did not meet criteria for both disorders was used to establish a normative threshold.

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Objective: One of the primary tools in the assessment of individual-level patient outcomes is Jacobson and Truax, (1991's) Reliable Change Index (RCI). Recent efforts to optimize the RCI have revolved around three issues: (a) extending the RCI beyond two timepoints, (b) estimating the RCI using scale scores from item response theory or factor analysis and (c) estimation of person- and time-specific standard errors of measurement.

Method: We present an adaptation of a two-stage procedure, a measurement error-corrected multilevel model, as a tool for RCI estimation (with accompanying Statistical Analysis System syntax).

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Multiple factor analytic and item response theory studies have shown that items/symptoms vary in their relative clinical weights in structured interview measures for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite these findings, the use of total scores, which treat symptoms as though they are equally weighted, predominates in practice, with the consequence of undermining the precision of clinical decision-making. We conducted an integrative data analysis (IDA) study to harmonize PTSD structured interview data (i.

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Background/objective: The present study leveraged the expertise of an international group of posttraumatic stress and substance use disorder (PTSD+SUD) intervention researchers to identify which methods of categorizing interventions which target SUD, PTSD, or PTSD+SUD for populations with both PTSD+SUD may be optimal for advancing future systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and comparative effectiveness studies which strive to compare effects across a broad variety of psychotherapy types.

Method: A two-step process was used to evaluate the categorization terminology. First, we searched the literature for pre-existing categories of PTSD+SUD interventions from PTSD+SUD clinical trials, systematic and literature reviews.

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This paper describes Project Harmony, a Virtual Clinical Trial (VCT) funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to harmonize and analyze data from over 40 independent psychological, pharmacologic and/or combined pharmacological treatment studies for posttraumatic stress disorder and comorbid alcohol and other drug use disorders (PTSD/AOD). The study attends to three distinct analysis challenges: (1) variation in measurement of PTSD/AOD across studies, time, populations and reporters, (2) cross-study variation in treatment effect sizes and (3) non-randomized, cross-study variation in the classification of treatments (despite within-study randomization of treatment arms). To address these challenges, the study combines meta-analysis of individual patient data (MIPD), integrative data analysis (IDA) and propensity score weighting (PSW) to integrate raw data from these clinical trials.

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