NIDA has awarded INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellowships to two scientists:
- João Castaldelli-Maia, M.D., Ph.D., ABC Health University Center, Brazil, will work with Silvia Martins, M.D., Ph.D., Columbia University. Dr. Castaldelli-Maia will join the Substance Abuse Epidemiology Training Program as a postdoctoral international fellow. The hypothesis of his fellowship research project is that there is a cluster of U.S. counties that are socially and behaviorally at risk for opioid polydrug overdose, and that these counties have lower rates of medically prescribed opioids and opioid use disorders, and higher rates of substance use disorders. Dr. Castaldelli-Maia will link five different databases to investigate the role of those variables on fatal opioid polydrug overdoses over a 10-year period. He will use a mixed ecological design, mixing multigroup ecological analyses and time trends, as well as a type of machine learning to identify clusters at the U.S. county level.
- Tekendra Rai, M.D., Ph.D., India, will spend his fellowship with Linda Cottler, Ph.D., University of Florida. Dr. Rai, a 2008-2009 NIDA Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow, is the program officer for the Anti-Drugs Program for the state of Sikkim. His fellowship research proposal is to develop and pilot-test a prevention intervention for substance-abusing drivers in Sikkim. He will conduct a systematic review of substance abuse among passenger car drivers in Sikkim, a quantitative survey of substance use and its risk factors among taxi drivers in Sikkim, and qualitative interviews of a random sample of substance-abusing drivers in Sikkim.