Hilton Foundation Also A Major Funder Sizeable teen substance use research contributions have also been donated by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, a family foundation that provides funds to nonprofit organizations. The Hilton Foundation donated $250,000 in 2009 for adolescent substance abuse research. In 2013, it gave $2 million to the American Board of Addiction Medicine to create a national Center for Physician Training in Addiction Medicine that educates and trains physicians on ways to prevent adolescent substance use through early intervention. Hilton is also a funder of the Screening, Brief Intervention, and referral to Treatment (SBIRT) model. SBIRT, designed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), has a three-pronged approach to the teen substance abuse problem: screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment. Screening quickly assesses the severity of substance use and identifies appropriate treatment. Brief intervention focuses on shifting substance use motivation toward behavioral change. Referral to treatment provides adolescents that need more treatment with access to specific care, according to SAMHSA. The Hilton Foundation gave $1.64 million to the University of Minnesota Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research to study SBIRT in 2014. In 2013, they gave the Boston-based nonprofit health care advocacy organization Community Catalyst $2.5 million for educating policymakers about SBIRT.
In order to curb this health problem, the ABCD study seeks to find answers to “help inform prevention and treatment research priorities, public health strategies, and policy decision,” according to the NIH announcement. The questions include how the long-term influence of occasional use of marijuana, alcohol, tobacco and other substances—mixed together or alone—versus regular use impacts the developing brain. The study will also explore how using a specific substance impacts the risk of using other substances: what brain pathways link adolescent substance abuse and risk for mental health problems, what impact substance use has on physical health, or psychological development, information processing, learning, memory, academic achievement, and social development. Researchers will also study how drug initiation factors—like prenatal exposure, genetics, head trauma and demographics—influence substance use and consequences. “The ABCD Study is an important opportunity to closely examine, in humans, the hypothesized link between adolescent alcohol abuse and long-term harmful effects on brain development and function,” says George Koob, director of NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), in the NIH ABCD announcement. “Adolescents have access to high potency marijuana and greater varieties of nicotine delivery devices than previous generations. We want to know how that and other trends affect the trajectory of the developing brain.” ABCD Study Aims To Inform Prevention, Treatment “With advances in neuroimaging and other investigative tools, we will be able to look in greater detail at the impact of substance use on young people,” says Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), in the organization’s ABCD announcement.
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