Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, has been chosen to receive a grant from the Learning for Early Careers in Addiction & Diversity (LEAD) Program to fund her pilot project, “The Role of the Black Church in Improving Access to Care for Blacks with Substance Use Disorders.”
Jordan will use focus groups, in-depth interviews, and an online survey to conduct a needs assessment among Black community stakeholders, clergy in Black churches, and Black Americans with substance use disorders (BSD) to understand attitudes and barriers to accessing treatment.
The study will investigate ways to mitigate treatment barriers and identify if the Black church – a central, trusted institution – could be used as a portal to improve access and utilization of evidence-based treatments.
“Data from this study will reveal perceptions regarding the Black church and spirituality or religion, and determine if Black churches might serve as a less stigmatizing alternative for accessing treatment, thus facilitating the development of a community and BSD-vetted, web-based treatment intervention, aimed to decrease BSD substance use,” Jordan wrote in her funding application. “The suitability of the intervention approach will likely be increased by iteratively bringing community and BSD informant perceptions together to identify the optimal setting and mode of delivery to enhance acceptability of the web-based intervention.”
The LEAD Program is integrated within the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network. Research scholars who receive grants must complete an independent pilot project related to drug abuse and addictions research. The pilot studies are expected to generate preliminary data for further study and larger grant proposals.
Jordan graduated from the Yale Department of Psychiatry Residency Program and completed a fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry last year.