Project Leaders
Dr. Arthur (Trey) Andrews III Mediators of Violence Exposure and Substance Use (MoVES)
The MoVES Project is providing data on craving in understudied substances (cocaine, methamphetamine, and opioids) in the overlooked rural setting.
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Dr. Jeffrey Smith RISC: Capturing Rural Injection Risk Network Structures from Continuous-time Interaction Data
The RISC project aimed to understand the unique networks and structural risk factors associated with rural drug use in order to understand and lessen the potential for epidemics, even if current infection rates are low.
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Dr. Matthew Johnson CLASS: Cognitive, Large - And Small - Scale
The long-term goals of this project are to predict outcomes for people who use drugs (PWUD) and, in subsequent projects, to apply these techniques to the development of new interventions and the study of other conditions.
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Dr. Gurudutt PendyalaTEAMS: Testing the Efficacy of Ibudilast to Attenuate Meth-Seeking and Associated Synaptic Inflammation at the Synapse
The TEAMS Project advances a critical need for additional research to investigate the value of ibudilast as a possible treatment drug for methamphetamine use.
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Pilot Projects
Dr. Roberto Abadie An Ethnographic Exploration of Opioid Agonist Treatment Barriers and Facilitators Among Opioid Users in Rural Nebraska
This project aims to collect ethnographic data on opioid users living in two rural communities in Nebraska to document behavioral and structural factors affecting barriers and facilitators to Opioid Agonist Treatment enrollment.
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Dr. Robin GauthierInterpersonal Conflict and Drug Use in the Great Plains
This project aims to create a dynamic multi-level network model that utilizes relationship characteristics and contextual factors to better understand the interpersonal context of rural drug use.
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Dr. Tierney Lorenz Predictors of Sex-Linked Marijuana and Alcohol Use in Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Women
This project aims to research how individual differences in sexual response may contribute to sexual minority women’s risk for substance use and misuse.
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Dr. Palsamy PeriyasamyCocaine-Mediated Microglial Activation Involves Epigenetic Dysregulation of DNMT1/INCRNA XIST/PPARG Signaling Axis
This project aims to research whether cocaine activates the microglia via lncRNA Xist-DNMT1-mediated epigenetic promoter DNA hypermethylation of PPARG, thereby resulting in elevated secretion of proinflammatory cytokines.
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Dr. Sowmya YelamanchiliSex specific brain derived extracellular vesicle markers associated with chronic methamphetamine use
Though often perceived to be a problem of the inner city, substance abuse has long been prevalent in rural areas. Rural adults have higher rates of alcohol abuse, tobacco use, and methamphetamine use, while prescription drug abuse and heroin use has grown in towns of every size. Factors contributing to substance abuse in rural America include- low education attainment, poverty, unemployment, high risk behaviors and isolation. The current proposal focuses on the potent psychostimulant methamphetamine (MA) that continues to pose a significant threat globally but importantly here in rural Nebraska.
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