Now into its second phase, the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center is expanding both its collaborations with partners and the reach of its research.
The Rural Drug Addiction Research Center, founded at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 2019, brings together scientists from a variety of disciplines to address the etiology, assessment, prevention and treatment of drug misuse in rural America. It received a five-year, $11.6 million renewal grant in 2024 from the National Institutes of Health’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence Program to continue its work.
Rick Bevins, center director, said the project encompasses a holistic “synapse to society” approach to understanding drug use.
Most previous research has focused on drug use in urban areas. The center’s focus on rural communities has revealed key differences in substance use patterns and treatment needs. There are challenges to receiving treatment in rural areas, including availability and transportation needs. Moreover, there can be social stigma around substance use, and that can look different in smaller communities, where there is less anonymity to receive services.
However, Bevins said, the center has found that rural areas are not a monolith. Not only do rural areas differ among states but also within Nebraska.
“Lexington rural is not the same as Sidney rural,” Bevins said.
One difference between Nebraska and even some neighboring states is that methamphetamines, not opioids, are reported as being used more frequently.
Devan Crawford, the center's director of research strategy, said that’s one reason the project works closely with Nebraska partners. Those relationships help the center adapt and meet the needs of community agencies.
“We’ve extended our collaboration with national partners, too,” Crawford added.
Current center projects capture the center’s broad reach. Studies span the center’s “synapse to society” theme, investigating the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on multisensory processing; considering the therapeutic efficacy of dietary palmitoleate supplements in mitigating maternal oxycodone-induced fetal brain damage; focusing on the impact of parents’ alcohol use on children’s socialization in school, mapping transportation barriers in substance use treatment, and developing a web-based, smartphone-accessible emotion regulation training for people recovering from substance use disorders in residential treatment, just to name a few.
“The research is impactful because it’s focused on the rural landscape,” Bevins said. “We’re excited about being able to make inroads to better understanding the causes of substance use, then work with experts and communities to develop interventions and solutions.”
The center currently is accepting applications for future research, said Kimberly Tyler, George Holmes Professor of sociology and co-director the project's Longitudinal Networks Core.
Part of the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center, the research core provides support for sampling, survey design and project implementation, including specialized software for ecological momentary assessment data collection. Among its contributions is ongoing data collection with a cohort of people who are using drugs.
“We recruit them, we talk to them, ideally every six to nine months,” said Patrick Habecker, research assistant professor and the core’s co-director. “We’ve talked to more than 1,000 people, we’ve done something in the order of 2,000 interviews, over the years, and we continue to do that.”
With these interactions, researchers collect longitudinal data on attitudes, behaviors and social networks from people who are usually underrepresented in substance use research. For a fee, other investigators can tap into this resource for their own data collection, rather than recruiting their own research participants.
“That was a huge Phase One success, and I think it’s been one of our most in-use services since, and still is, and has supported a range of grants,” Habecker said.
The core also partners with many other research centers and campus units. More information about the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center and core services can be found on their website.
Grant support for the center is provided by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
