Leveraging community-based participatory research and infoveillance to advance the science on recovery community centers serving Black communities - Project Summary
Recovery community centers (RCCs) are emerging as an important third component of recovery-oriented
systems of care that, until recently, were comprised solely of professional treatment and mutual-help
organizations. These centers exist in the heart of communities, and provide a range of recovery-oriented,
peer-delivered services. Despite recent rapid largescale investment in their growth, empirical data on their
functioning and outcomes are extremely limited. To develop infrastructure to support the advancement of
scientific knowledge on recovery support services, including specifically RCCs, NIDA created RFA-DA-20-014
in 2019. I am the M-PI of one of 5 R24 grants funded nationwide to build this infrastructure, the only one
focusing on RCCs. The goal of this K02 is to provide me with protected time to pursue the extraordinary
opportunities for collaboration, insight, and research this R24 provides me with. I am a recently
promoted Associate Professor, who specializes in clinical and translational research, with the long-term goal of
improving access to care for persons seeking to stop problematic substance use. The K02 would allow me to
engage in research activities that deepen and expand the aims of the R24, particularly with regards to RCCs
serving Black communities. Specifically, my proposed K02 research plan includes (1) secondary data
analyses of two nationwide datasets to examine racial disparities in the utilization of recovery support services;
(2) content analyses of smartphone apps that RCCs may connect their participants with that address the
content of apps purporting to support recovery from opioid use disorder (OUD), and their findability; (3) an
infodemiology study to examine the community-level impact of RCCs on stigma reduction; (4) two community-
based participatory research (CBPR) projects with two different, low-resourced RCCs, and (5) research
activities that lay the foundation for two large-scale R01s that address fundamental questions regarding the
role of RCCs in the healthcare system (i.e., do RCCs work? can RCCs be effective mHealth implementation
partners?). To support these research activities, I will expand my expertise by training in two areas: (1)
community-engaged research to enable me to build respectful, trusting, productive, and synergistic
partnerships with RCCs serving Black communities, and (2) infodemiology to provide community-level insights
using real-world, real-time data. My community collaborators are Mr. Phil Rutherford, the chief operating
officer of Voices and Faces of Recovery; the Center for African American Recovery Development (CAARD), an
organization spanning several RCCs; Chainless Change, an RCC located in FL; and New Life II, an RCC
located in CT. My scientific collaborators are Drs. Monica Skewes and Kasisomayajula Viswanath (CBPR),
and Dr. Patricia Cavazos-Rehg (infodemiology, OUD mHealth).
