(Press-News.org) DETROIT – Researchers at Wayne State University will work with Michigan agencies and education partners to improve access to school-based substance use prevention and treatment programs for adolescents who are at risk of substance misuse and substance use disorders (SUDs).
The research will be funded by a two-year, $883,176 R61 exploratory grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Andria B. Eisman, associate professor of community health in Wayne State’s College of Education, will lead the study, “Reducing Addiction through Prevention Infrastructure Development (RAPID).”
According to Eisman, preventing opioid and other drug use problems before they begin or escalate provides substantial benefits to individuals, communities and society.
“Prevention and early intervention services can help interrupt the progression of substance use problems, ultimately reducing the need for costly downstream treatment of substance use disorders in the future,” said Eisman. “This is especially important for marginalized youth, who face elevated risk factors for SUDs and experience challenges accessing necessary services.”
While schools offer a crucial setting for implementing evidence-based prevention and early intervention programs to mitigate these risks and promote positive development, many lack the infrastructure required for sustained delivery and long-term impact of school-based services for youth at risk of SUDs.
“This project will address this critical need by building upon our research team’s prior work, Rapid Adaptation to Prevent Drug Use, to establish a sustainable infrastructure for multi-tiered SUD prevention in high schools,” said Eisman. “We will work collaboratively with our state agency, community and education partners, and leverage a unique resource in our state, the network of Regional School Health Coordinators, to aid schools in building essential capacity to support substance use services.”
The R61 phase of this project is designed to adapt the infrastructure blueprint from the initial RAPID project, which focuses on leveraging existing school strengths and ensuring contextual relevance. The project will also give the research team an opportunity to examine effective financing strategies for implementing substance use services in school settings. The team will identify feasible funding options and create a roadmap to guide their selection, supporting RAPID’s goal of improving sustainability of these essential services. If successful, the team will apply for NIH’s R33 phase. which will allow them to conduct a large-scale trial of the RAPID infrastructure-building strategies and determine costs and return on investment compared to standard technical assistance.
“This research will offer critical tools needed for the prevention and intervention of substance use disorders,” said Dr. Ezemenari M. Obasi, vice president for research & innovation at Wayne State University. “In addition, this program led by Dr. Eisman could create cost-effective strategies that ultimately impact public health by lowering the risk of substance use disorders throughout the lifespan. I look forward to the important outcomes of this research.”
The grant number for this award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health is DA063683.
# # #
Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.
END
Woodpeckers pack a punch., pounding wood with extreme force and experiencing decelerations of up to 400g. Now Nicholas Antonson, Matthew Fuxjager, Stephen Ogunbiyi, Margot Champigneulle and Thomas Roberts (all at Brown University, USA) and bird song expert Franz Goller (University of Münster, Germany) reveal in Journal of Experimental Biology that drilling woodpeckers turn themselves in hammers birds by bracing their head, neck, abdomen and tail muscles to hold their bodies rigid when they pound on wood, driving each impact with the hip flexor and front neck muscles.
In addition, ...
A team of four leading scientists from four European universities has been awarded a prestigious Synergy Grant of approximately €10 million by the European Research Council (ERC) for the project CARAMEL (Covalent Chaotropic Membrane Transport for Biotherapeutic Delivery). The project aims to overcome one of the biggest challenges in medicine: efficiently delivering modern biotherapeutics, such as peptides and proteins, into cells—a key hurdle in developing new treatments for diseases like cancer.
The CARAMEL project team comprises four principal investigators from leading European universities: Dr. ...
Jiahe Zhang, PhD, of the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham, is the lead author of the paper published in Nature Neuroscience, “Cortical and subcortical mapping of the human allostatic-interoceptive system using 7 Tesla fMRI.”
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, and Marta Bianciardi, PhD, of the Department of Radiology at Mass General Brigham are co-senior authors. Barrett is also affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Brigham.
Q: How would you summarize your study for a lay audience?
Using an ultra-high-resolution imaging technology called 7 Tesla functional MRI (fMRI) on human participants, we mapped how different parts of the brain work together. ...
HOUSTON – (Nov. 6, 2025) – A team of researchers from Rice University and the Houston Methodist Research Institute has received a John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award through the Gulf Coast Consortia to study how the brain responds over time to neural implants.
The project brings together expertise in materials science, neuroscience and clinical medicine and is led by Rice researchers Yimo Han, assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering, and Chong Xie, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, together with Dr. Damiano Barone, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Houston Methodist ...
NORMAN, Okla. – Lethal lettuce in Missouri. Murderous onions in Colorado. To biochemists at the University of Oklahoma, these aren’t just headlines – they’re warnings of the risks posed by drug-resistant bacteria and the human cost of inaction.
“Treatment of chronic conditions and many surgeries requires antibiotics,” said Helen Zgurskaya, George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the OU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “When bacteria become resistant to antibiotics ...
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) presents a roundup of four research articles recently published across its esteemed journals. Widely recognized for fostering innovation and advancing ecological knowledge, ESA’s journals consistently feature illuminating and impactful studies. This compilation of papers explores unexpected links between Arctic land and sea, how much beavers could counter the threat of wildfire, whether uniformity within a species is good for biodiversity and what happened after ...
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – November 6, 2025) The enzyme RNA polymerase II transcribes genes into messenger RNA. This process is guided by modifications to the enzyme’s “tail” called phosphorylation patterns. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital explored these patterns, identifying 117 kinases that could phosphorylate multiple locations within the protein tail. This greatly expands upon the set of kinases previously known to phosphorylate RNA polymerase II. The work also links the enzyme’s activity to ...
Why This Matters:
Accelerates Crop Innovation: Cuts months off the process of developing gene-edited crops, speeding up the path from gene discovery to field-ready varieties.
Expands Accessibility: Reduces reliance on specialized tissue culture labs, making advanced bioengineering feasible for more research institutions and crop species.
Boosts Global Food Security: Has the potential to enable faster breeding of crops with better resilience, nutrient efficiency and disease resistance.
A team of plant biotechnologists ...
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in collaboration with Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives (MBI), the City of Worcester, and more than 30 regional partners, has been awarded $5.2 million from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to establish the BioHub, a transformative initiative designed to power the bioindustrial revolution in Central Massachusetts.
The award was announced by Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll at an event held at WPI, where she also recognized 14 other innovation and technology projects funded by the state to strengthen Massachusetts’ growing innovation economy.
The BioHub will ...
The United States is falling far behind China in remote sensing research, according to a comprehensive new study that tracked seven decades of academic publishing and reveals a notable reversal in global technological standing.
China now accounts for nearly half of all peer-reviewed journal publications in this critical field, while American output has declined to single digits.
"This represents one of the most significant shifts in global technological leadership in recent history," said Debra ...
