Dr. Mildred M. Maldonado-Molina received a K01 award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The project is titled "Alcohol Contextual Influences: Effects on Health Disparities and Mortality". Funding for the award is $617K for the period of 2/15/2009 to 1/31/2013.
This NIAAA Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) will allow Dr. Maldonado-Molina to develop a research program to reduce health disparities in alcohol use and alcohol-related consequences. With support from a K-award, Dr. Maldonado-Molina will become an advanced methodologist in the alcohol field in terms of analyses of hierarchical and intensively longitudinal data (i.e., hundreds of repeated observations across multiple groups nested in multiple levels). The proposed research uses hierarchical and intensive longitudinal data to examine whether alcohol exposure and alcohol policies might exacerbate or attenuate disparities in alcohol use and alcohol-related mortality across subgroups of the population (e.g. gender, ethnicity, age groups). The research plan is guided by two aims: (1) test effects of exposure and sources of alcohol (e.g., parents, friends, commercial) on trajectories of alcohol use among adolescents across gender and ethnic subgroups; and (2) test effects of selected alcohol policies in reducing health disparities in traffic crash mortality from 1976 to 2002.
