Substance Use, Gender, and Applied Research (SUGAR)

With support from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, this study will modify the mobile health (mHealth) intervention used in the NC Young Women’s CoOp project by adding content about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and a virtual group component. The intervention will then be tested among young Black women in Durham and Wake counties in North Carolina. This project aims to reduce risk behaviors and promote women's health, including the increase of PrEP utilization.

This HIV and substance use study is using a multilevel approach to help achieve the new Undetectable=Untransmittable (U=U) goals through increasing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation and adherence and retention, while also addressing stigma in clinics toward young couples who use alcohol and other drugs and seek HIV services.

The HIV prevention project seeks to determine whether implementing a multilevel, woman-focused intervention, the Young Women’s Health CoOp (YWHC), for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) readiness, uptake, and adherence is a viable complement to the HIV prevention plan for the Government of South Africa. Specifically, this project aims to: increase uptake, of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services and readiness and uptake of PrEP among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) aged 16 to 24 who engage in high-risk sexual behaviors; and reduce their barriers to accessing SRH services by addressing and reducing stigma and discrimination (S&D) in clinics.

This HIV prevention study, supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), is developing a mobile health application to deliver an HIV risk-reduction intervention. It will test the relative efficacy of intervention delivery via the app compared with face-to-face delivery. This intervention—for young, African American women—is an adaptation of the Women’s CoOp, an evidence-based intervention that has also been adapted globally. In collaboration with local health departments in North Carolina, this study aims to reach women aged 18 to 25 who have not been recently tested for HIV.

This R34 study, funded by NIMH, is partnering with Ryan White clinics and SisterLove, Inc., to adapt a stigma-reduction training, develop a prescribing platform to help providers offer pharmacotherapy for mental health disorders and/or alcohol use disorder, and test the feasibility of these tools in Ryan White clinics in the Atlanta, Georgia area.

The EMPOW-HER Project: Educating Medical Providers on Women-Controlled HIV Prevention to Expand Reach to African American Women in Atlanta/Implementing PrEP into Non-Title X Settings to Reduce HIV Disparities among African American Women in the Atlanta MSA

This supplement project, funded by UNC Centers for AIDS Research (UNC CFAR), is partnering with SisterLove, Inc to adapt and pretest an online PrEP training to promote PrEP prescribing among reproductive healthcare providers in the Atlanta MSA who serve African American women. We aim to increase providers’ PrEP knowledge and self-efficacy to increase PrEP access among African American women.

Funded by UNC Centers for AIDS Research grant P30 AI050410.

This supplemental project, funded by the UNC Center for AIDS Research, is an implementation pilot in collaboration with Mecklenburg County Public Health in North Carolina that aims to reach and retain African American adults in HIV prevention and treatment and ultimately to reduce HIV disparities. Although study activities were delayed for this project due to COVID-19, the team is excited to proceed with virtual focus group discussions for pre-implementation phase activities to adapt and refine the tailored intervention and looks forward to the implementation stage.

This collaborative substance abuse prevention project, supported by NIDA and primed by Benten Technologies, is designed to improve the efficiency and timeliness of collaborative care management for the case manager and the postpartum mother with a substance use disorder by providing an electronic Plan of Safe Care (ePOSC) accessible via mobile phone or tablet.

This project, funded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD, uses an established behavioral approach to incentivize breastfeeding behavior on a monthly basis for 6- and 12-month follow-ups among postpartum mothers enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. We will track medical incidents, infant weights, and the costs associated with the intervention.

This project, funded by NIDA, provides expertise in infectious disease surveillance and outbreak investigation, statistical analyses, and state and local health department operations and serves as primary liaison with state and local public health officials. We are assessing prevention and treatment resources for opioid users in western NC and identifying ways to improve capacity over time by evaluating the gender differences of addiction with injection drugs. This includes training health care providers to provide hepatitis C virus care and other services to people who inject opioids; employing bridge counselors to link people who use opioids to services across different settings; and establishing syringe service programs to reduce opioid-related morbidity and mortality.