Pilot Studies
Over the course of six years, the JEAP Initiative is funding a total of seven pilot studies focused on recovery support services, which aim to gather preliminary data to support grant applications to the National Institutes of Health. Below is an overview of ongoing and completed pilot studies.
Current Trainees
Ryan Flinn, JEAP Trainee
Ryan is an Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of North Dakota. They are an early career counseling psychologist whose research program aims to address the syndemic of trauma, substance use disorder, and criminal justice system involvement. They are specifically interested in studying recovery support services. Ryan identifies as a person with lived experience of the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Ryan is in long-term recovery from substance use disorder.
Pilot Study: Examination of Multicultural Orientation Among Peer Support Specialists as a Mechanism for Promoting Positive Working Relationships and Improved Substance Use Outcomes in Emerging Adults
Peer support specialists offer emerging adults (EAs) with substance use disorders an array of services to promote positive outcomes, but the effective delivery of those services first requires peers to develop a strong working relationship with their EA clients. Unfortunately, the factors that promote positive working relationships between peers and EAs are currently not well understood. This study will examine peers’ beliefs and experiences concerning the role of multicultural orientation in their work as a potential factor promoting positive peer-EA relationships, as well as EA outcomes.
Emily Pasman, JEAP Trainee
Emily is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health. She earned her PhD in Social Work from Wayne State University in May 2023. Her social work practice has centered around the development, implementation, and evaluation of peer-delivered services for people in or seeking recovery. Her current program of research aims to expand harm reduction interventions, improve peer-delivered services, and promote effective youth prevention and recovery support. Her research is informed by her lived experience in recovery, her background in peer recovery support services, and her academic and research training in harm reduction interventions.
Pilot Study: Preliminary Steps Toward Developing a Training Intervention for Peer Providers to Improve Attitudes Toward Non-Abstinent Recovery
This project aims to develop best practices for training peer providers to support clients in or seeking non-abstinent recovery, a pathway that appeals to many emerging adults. The objectives follow the first three steps of Intervention Mapping framework to identify the preliminary components of an intervention that is acceptable, feasible, and effective. The proposed intervention will have potential to expand the reach of peer recovery support services and help facilitate MOUD and harm reduction service referrals, access, uptake, and retention, particularly among emerging adults.
Kathryn Gallardo, JEAP Trainee
Kathryn is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. She is a licensed master social worker and holds a PhD in Public Health with a specialization in Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences. Her research interests center on examining, expanding, and enhancing access to recovery support services (RSS) for underserved and marginalized populations, including individuals taking medications for an opioid use disorder (MOUD) and emerging adults. She is particularly interested in exploring how MOUD-related stigma can be combatted within the context of RSS.
Pilot Study: Factors that Influence Emerging Adults’ Access to and Retention in Recovery Housing: An Exploratory Study
An alarming number of emerging adults (ages 18-26) in the U.S. meet the criteria for having a past-year substance use disorder and many are at significant risk for overdose death; thus, there is a dire need to provide young people with services that will facilitate their recovery. Recovery housing stands out as a promising recovery support service for improving substance use outcomes among emerging adults; however, research on recovery housing for emerging adults is sparse. This study will advance our knowledge of recovery housing for emerging adults by identifying factors that influence their access to and retention in recovery housing, and ultimately substance use outcomes.
Trainee Alumni
Angela Hagaman, JEAP Trainee
Angela Hagaman, Operation’s Director for East Tennessee State University’s (ETSU) Addiction Science Center (ASC), provides leadership and support for the Center’s interdisciplinary research agenda and collaborates on a number of regional prevention and treatment initiatives. She has lived experience with familial substance use disorder (SUD) and grew up on a tobacco farm in Central Appalachia. In December of 2021, Angela received her Doctorate of Public Health (DrPH) at ETSU. Her dissertation, titled Peer Recovery Support Specialists: Role Clarification and Fit Within the Recovery Eco-Systems of Central Appalachia, will serve as a foundation for future research.
Pilot Study: Measurement Matters: A Peer-Driven Pilot Study to Enumerate the Core Components of Peer Recovery Support Service Delivery in Five U.S. Sub-Regions
Overdose death and the pervasive collateral consequences of substance use disorder (SUD) including justice system involvement, ill-health and personal and family distress have reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. Peer recovery support specialists (PRSS) are certified, trained professionals who identify as being in recovery from a SUD and are uniquely poised to engage persons across the service continuum; however, rigorous research on the impact of this expanding field is limited due in part to the wide array of service activities and settings in which PRSS work. This study will engage persons with lived experience of SUD and justice system involvement in the design of a quantitative survey instrument that will enumerate core components of PRSS service delivery which could advance recovery among individuals with SUD and serve as a valuable resource to the wider scientific and recovery community.
Camille Cioffi, JEAP Trainee
Camille Cioffi is a Research Associate at the University of Oregon's Center on Parenting and Opioids and Research Scientist at Influents Innovations. She holds a Ph.D. in Prevention Science from the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on strategies to provide structural, health, and behavioral health supports to pregnant, postpartum, and parenting people with substance use disorder. As a parent in recovery and perinatal loss survivor, her work comes from a parent-centric perspective, centering the pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting time periods as salient opportunities to improve adult health and behavioral health outcomes.
Pilot Study: Supporting Postpartum Emerging Adults with Substance Use Disorders to Sustain Recovery: Understanding Barriers and Facilitators to Services Utilization
Postpartum is a critical time point to promote sustained recovery among emerging adults with substance use disorders (SUDs), however, postpartum emerging adults encounter numerous structural, interpersonal, and individual barriers that impede their utilization of SUD services. The proposed project aims to identify barriers and facilitators to services utilization among this population; these barriers and facilitators would then inform the key objectives and mechanisms of an intervention aimed at achieving the dual outcomes of improving recovery capital and sustaining recovery. Thus, the findings from this pilot will be used to create focused, nonjudgmental, comprehensive solutions, especially leveraging recovery support services, to improve the probability that postpartum emerging adults will be able to sustain recovery following pregnancy.
Martha Tillson, JEAP Trainee
Martha Tillson is a Research Scientist at the University’s Center on Drug and Alcohol Research. In December 2022, Martha received her PhD in Sociology at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY). Her research centers on women’s gendered experiences of substance use/misuse and related risks, with a focus on factors and services that support women’s recovery/remission, particularly at community reentry post-incarceration. This work is motivated and informed by her academic background in psychology and social work, lived experience, and desire to reduce stigma and drug-related harms.
Pilot Study: Examining Peer Recovery Support Services as an Innovative Context for Targeting MOUD Stigma among Justice System-Involved Individuals from the Ground Up
With the ongoing public health crisis of opioid misuse and overdose deaths and its disproportionate impact on individuals with justice system involvement, there is an urgent need to facilitate the use of life-saving medications to treat opioid use disorder (MOUD), yet stigma against the use of MOUD – particularly within recovery communities – hinders its uptake. This study will examine experiences of peer recovery support specialists (PRSS) and their clients navigating MOUD stigma and assess its impact on peer-client relationship quality, in the context of other key factors (e.g., history of arrest and/or incarceration). Findings will be critical to support the development of future interventions in collaboration with PRSS to increase MOUD acceptance and utilization among justice system-involved populations.
Patrick Hibbard, JEAP Postdoctoral Fellow
Patrick Hibbard is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow who started working with the JEAP Initiative at OSLC, and has now transitioned to Chestnut Health Systems to continue this work. He studies programs and organizational management in the criminal justice and substance use disorder policy areas, using a variety of methodologies. He is interested in researching and improving programs in these areas, as he identifies as a person with lived experience in both the US criminal justice system and recovery from substance use disorder.
Pilot Study: Treatment Courts and Community-Level Impact: A Rigorous Preliminary Examination of Criminal and Public Health Outcomes
Treatment courts (TCs) address underlying conditions that lead to crime (such as substance use disorder), currently covering nearly every county in the US, but little is known about their impact on the communities in which they operate. This study explores TC influences on community-level crime, substance use services, and public health outcomes (like overdose deaths), as well as how factors within TCs (number of participants, graduation rates, etc.) alter these outcomes.