Louis Brown
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Community coalitions are local groups of schools, parents, health agencies and other partners working to prevent drug use. They are central to U.S.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Social Science
- Topics
drug prevention
substance use prevention
youth substance use
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Estimate whether the Coalition Check-Up (CCU) technical assistance system improves coalition capacity, measured by member reports of team processes, network composition and collaborative structure, in a randomized trial against a data-report-only condition.
- Estimate the CCU's effect on how coalitions implement evidence-based drug prevention programs, including the programs' reach, implementation quality and sustainability over time.
- Test whether coalitions receiving the CCU achieve greater reductions in youth substance use, examining whether gains in coalition capacity are the path through which prevention programs succeed.
More about the research
drug prevention policy. However, they reduce youth substance use only when they put evidence-based prevention programs (EBPs) into practice, and many coalitions lack the skills and resources to do this well. The help coalitions can get, called technical assistance (TA), is often too expensive to offer widely. Little research shows which kinds of support work best.
Why it matters
Many communities rely on volunteer coalitions to keep young people away from drugs, but these coalitions often struggle to run proven prevention programs well. A tested, low-cost support system could help coalitions carry out and sustain those programs. That could reduce youth drug use and help research-based prevention reach communities faster.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Madeline Renny
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Adapt an evidence-based brief negotiated interview and change plan for youth at higher risk of a substance use disorder in the pediatric emergency department, using the ADAPT-ITT framework, a stakeholder board and youth pilot testing.
Pamela Ling
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Adapt the Quit the Hit Toolkit for delivery by youth-serving organizations, assessing their needs and capacity and creating facilitator training materials plus guides for promoting and adopting the program.
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.
The school
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: 25 labs on PI Pages, $419M a year on research, 340 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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