Resilience, Empowerment, & Addiction Leadership

Welcome to the Resilience, Empowerment, & Addiction Leadership (REAL) lab. The REAL lab focuses on developing leaders passionate about building resilience through empowerment to promote improvements in addiction and other health outcomes among priority populations. We believe collaboration is key, so we foster an environment where various perspectives come together to spark creativity and drive discovery.

Our research is attentive to constructs like craving, racial stress, identity, internalized oppression, and social determinants of health. We address pressing issues in addiction research using sophisticated methods including personalized imagery racial stress script procedures, data harmonization techniques, and psychometric testing including evaluating measurement invariance. Past and ongoing research projects span a variety of topics that include conceptualizing and assessing craving for alcohol, stimulants, nicotine, opioids, and cannabis; attending to racial stress and trauma in treatment; evaluating alcohol and drug treatment utilization, barriers, and outcomes; and understanding the process of self-change. We leverage both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to address our research questions.
Through partnerships with community members with lived experience and other key stakeholders, we aim to translate our findings into real-world solutions that make a difference. Together, we will shape the future and create a positive impact through research.