Adverse childhood experiences and alcohol misuse in Latino adolescents: testing biopsychosocial and cultural mechanisms supplement

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Project Summary The purpose of this K supplement is to request support following the impending critical life event of childbirth. I was awarded the K08 award in February 2022 and gave birth to my first child in June 2022. During these four months, I hired and trained a research assistant, started data collection, and promptly went on maternity leave. Given budgetary constraints, I am only able to pay for 10 hours a week of a research assistant’s time, which is exclusively focused on recruitment and data collection. The K08 aims are to 1) identify risk and protective factors in the ACEs-alcohol use link, 2) evaluate the role of HPA axis functioning (hair cortisol) in the ACEs- alcohol misuse link and identify relevant protective factors and 3) explore epigenetic mechanisms (saliva DNA methylation) linking ACEs and HPA axis functioning. Despite my child’s health problems and the limited research assistant support, I have made significant progress on my K08 project, including enrolling 140 of the 150 target participants in a year, completing coursework at Harvard, engaging in local and national presentations, and publishing 15 co-authored manuscripts. However, despite the excellent progress on my K08 goals, it has been done at an unsustainable pace, particularly given my child’s medical complications. Therefore, the purpose of my K08 Supplement application is to request funding for me to hire a full-time research assistant and fund a part-time biostatistician. The research assistant and biostatistician will assist me with the duties I am assuming right now and will help with additional activities in the next project phases (e.g., data management, analysis, publishing preliminary data) and support me in my goal to submit my first R01 this upcoming year. Given that epigenetic analysis is so costly, I have had to allocate most of my earlier years of the research budget towards epigenetic analysis. However, my budget during years 3.5-5 are almost exclusively allocated to fund their time, so I should be able to return to full productivity at the end of the supplemental period.