Lorra Garey
University of Houston, TX·Psychology
People living with HIV face health risks that go well beyond the virus itself. Heavy drinking and cigarette smoking are far more common in this group than in the general population, and both make it harder to stay on antiretroviral medication and stay engaged in care.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
hazardous alcohol use
smoking cessation
anxiety sensitivity
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2031
What they work on
- Refine a single-session, computer-delivered personalized feedback intervention (I-PFI) addressing drinking, mood and HIV health with 20 adults with HIV, using mixed methods to assess acceptability, clarity and relevance.
- Test I-PFI against an alcohol-only feedback intervention and a nutrition control in a randomized trial of 300 adults with HIV, measuring drinking with the phosphatidylethanol blood biomarker plus self-report.
- Track whether reductions in anxiety sensitivity, the fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations, accompany improvements in drinking, antiretroviral adherence and quality of life, using twice-daily smartphone assessments over 30 days and follow-ups to 6 months.
- Review existing MASP+ smartphone intervention materials with 30 Black adults with HIV who smoke to confirm cultural and therapeutic fit before the trial.
- Evaluate MASP+, which combines smoking cessation, anxiety sensitivity reduction and HIV management, against the NCI QuitGuide app and assessment-only control in 300 Black adults with HIV who smoke, with follow-up through week 54.
More about the research
Anxiety and depression frequently accompany them. Work here develops short, phone- or computer-delivered behavioral treatments that tackle these problems together rather than one at a time, and tests them in randomized trials with people recruited from HIV clinics and nationally. A common thread is anxiety sensitivity: the fear that ordinary bodily sensations of anxiety, such as a racing heart, are themselves dangerous. This tendency is elevated among people with HIV, it feeds both drinking and smoking, and it can be changed with brief training.
Why it matters
Smoking and hazardous drinking are leading drivers of illness and death among people with HIV, and both worsen adherence to HIV medication. If these brief digital programs work, they would be low-cost, low-burden options that HIV clinics could offer at scale, reaching people who cannot easily access in-person behavioral treatment, and they could narrow gaps in cessation, mental health and HIV outcomes for Black adults with HIV who smoke.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Andre Miguel
Washington State University, WA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether rural smokers with alcohol use disorder who receive varenicline plus app-based contingency management submit more breathalyzer samples showing alcohol abstinence and non-heavy drinking days than those using a control app.
Vivian Go
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether the brief alcohol intervention (BAI), counseling based on Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, improves PrEP persistence and adherence in a randomized trial of 564 PrEP users with unhealthy drinking in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Dina Jones
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Define how momentary negative mood and nicotine craving relate to smoking lapse within individuals, using phone-based ecological momentary assessment in up to 150 adults who smoke menthol cigarettes during a planned quit attempt.
The school
University of Houston: 21 labs on PI Pages, $239M a year on research, 374 research doctorates a year.
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