Friday, November 22, 2024
11/22/2024
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This request for a Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award (K23) is made by Dr. Sandra Baker-Morissette to foster her academic and research career development as a clinical scientist in smoking, nicotine dependence and psychiatric comorbidity. Dr. Baker-Morissette's career development plan spans 5 years, during which she will continue to work closely with her sponsor, Dr. Gulliver, as well as her co-mentors, Drs. David Barlow, David Spiegel, and Stephen Tiffany. Statistical consultation will be provided by the Boston University School of Medicine. Her career plan includes individual meetings with each mentor, mentorship team meetings, and coursework in statistical analysis and ethics. Her short-term goals are to expand upon her theoretical, methodological, and statistical skills needed to become a highly productive clinical scientist and to develop an independent programmatic line of research. Dr. Baker-Morissette's plan should yield sufficient experience as defined by data collection, grant writing, and paper presentations to advance by the close of the award to Associate Professor. Dr. Baker-Morissette's overarching ambition is to make a meaningful contribution to the knowledge base on tobacco use and comorbid anxiety disorders across the lifespan. Her personal career goal is to progress to Full Professor within the Medical School of Boston University. The proposed study expands on Dr. Baker-Morissette's initial studies of anxiety and tobacco use research by examining the effects of nicotine and mood cue exposure on smoking urge and anxiety in cigarette smokers who have comorbid anxiety disorders. In a between- and within-subjects design, smokers will receive a nicotine (21 mg) or placebo patch in a counterbalanced order across two assessment days. During each assessment day, they will engage in a series of imaginal cue exposures that vary in content: smoking plus anxiety cues, smoking cues alone, anxiety cues alone, and neutral cues. Participants will complete self-report questionnaires prior to and following each exposure, including measures of smoking urge and anxiety. Understanding the effects of nicotine on smoking urge in a psychiatric population is particularly important in light of the difficulty that smokers with psychiatric comorbidity have with quitting smoking. Knowledge of such factors may assist our understanding of conditions that influence the relapse process, as well as the effect of certain cues on smoking urge when individuals are attempting to quit smoking and simultaneously using transdermal nicotine replacement therapy. In sum, this research will foster the career development of Dr. Baker- Morissette, and ensure the next step of her programmatic research, which has an excellent probabilit3-to increase our understanding of the links between nicotine, negative affect and tobacco use disorder.
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