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A. INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

THE LATINO RESOURCE CENTER AS AN INTEGRATED WHOLE

Specific Aims

The Latino Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse of Alameda County is seeking funding for the establishment of a Specialized Alcohol Research Center tentatively entitled the Latino Research Center on Alcoholism, Addiction and Community Involvement (LRC). It will be located in Oakland, California. The funding will be used to develop an integrated, multidisciplinary research center capable of undertaking rigorous scientific studies on behavioral, environmental and biological factors affecting Latinos with alcohol use, abuse and dependence. It will also undertake collaborative relationships with other scientific institutions to further the field’s knowledge about newly emerging biomedical factors that contribute to alcohol use disorders over the course of a lifespan. Latino-specific scientific Standards & Findings will be developed that will enable other program and research efforts to improve their ability to serve Latinos directly in community settings. Several aims and testable hypotheses have been identified to determine how well these standards work on a sizable population of Latinos with alcohol challenges, and the degree to which acculturation and other factors influence treatment successes, duration and drinking patterns. The same long-term study will judge how the study participants are impacted by other behavioral and environmental approaches that are often not tied directly to Latino cultural sensitivities.

LRC Program Component Overview

The LRC will have several components. Strong administrative and scientific core management elements will ensure that the LRC itself operates using strong scientific standards for its own investigatory activities. It will also create a series of Standards & Findings that can be used by other science programs—including evaluations of community-level services—seeking to determine the impacts of various treatment and prevention strategies on Latino populations. The first steps we undertake will detail the general parameters of these Standards & Findings. We will then undertake secondary and primary studies of behavioral and environmental approaches to see how well they improve Latino compatibility and result in more generalizable conclusions about treatment and prevention impacts. The secondary studies will include known results from other evaluations, and current or pending studies by other scientific institutions seeking to understand alcohol use, abuse and dependency, with the expectation that our work will help them understand how to better develop the underlying programs for Latinos. LRC will partner with collaborative scientific agencies to undertake this level of assessment. We will also conduct a longitudinal primary assessment of alcohol users in the Fruitvale District of Oakland. LRC’s parent organization, the Latino Commission, operates a number of outpatient services capable of providing study access to persons with multiple levels of alcohol use and abuse difficulties. The study will specifically test acculturation issues (which are tied to a person’s lifespan) as they related directly to treatment duration, retention and use patterns. Separate elements of the study design will likewise allow us to judge the study participants’ beliefs and perceptions of other methods that use either behavioral or environmental approaches that may or may not be developed for Latino clients. This multiple level approach, using distinct Principal Investigators, is assumed to result in more recognizable public health benefits applicable to Latino alcohol users and abusers.

LRC’s Credible Latino Community Access

One of LRC’s greatest contributions will be its ability to access a large target treatment population to test its Standards & Findings, and to judge the impact of Latino-center treatment and prevention models. The LRC will be a corporate extension of the work of the Latino Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse of Alameda County. The Latino Commission is a well-established 501(c)(3) with a 36-year history of expertise in the prevention and treatment assistance for adolescents and adult Latinos (men and women) with alcohol and drug problems. This association will allow for added credibility as we integrate this solid foundation for scientific inquiry into the work of this respected agency. It will generate better results that instill greater trust among Latinos on behalf of evaluation models responsive to Latino considerations. The Standards & Findings mechanism will be transferable to other science centers and community programs seeking to build theory-driven programs.

For additional information about this project or my consulting work writing grants and project materials, please feel free to contact me at AllanShore@msn.com or call 916-730-2801.