PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Despite being one of the largest and fastest-growing demographics in the United States (US), Latinx persons
experience striking health disparities, particularly in terms of hazardous drinking and co-occurring elevated
anxiety. The co-occurrence of these risk factors contributes to worse physical/mental health outcomes among
Latinx individuals. Few interventions to date have targeted hazardous drinking in the context of high anxiety
among Latinx persons. The current Phase I STTR project directly aligns with the published NIAAA SBIR/STTR
Research Interests1, including developing “Mobile device applications … to improve the effectiveness,
accessibility, and use of behavioral interventions for AUD and co-occurring disorders” and “Solutions for
minority health and health disparities with capabilities of reaching persons in rural, remote, and under-
resourced/under-served communities.” The current proposal has the end goal of improving strategies to
prevent alcohol misuse, alcohol use disorder, and alcohol-related consequences among an ‘at-risk’ population
for these conditions. In addition, it enhances the public health impact of NIAAA-supported research by focusing
on one of the fastest-growing and largest demographics in the US who demonstrate disparities in hazardous
drinking. We aim to remove barriers of treatment access and cost and increase treatment appeal by offering a
digital therapeutic product in the form of a smartphone-delivered, personalized, brief intervention named
Aliento, designed to address hazardous drinking and associated elevated anxiety. We will utilize and iterative
approach using expert input and focus groups (N = 21) of Latinx hazardous drinkers with elevated anxiety to
inform the design and functionality of the prototype. We will then assess program navigation and conduct
usability testing of Aliento among Latinx hazardous drinkers with elevated anxiety (N = 5) and prepare the final
prototype. With the final prototype we will evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effects of Aliento among
Latinx hazardous drinkers with elevated anxiety symptoms (N = 50) recruited from a Federally Qualified Health
Center (FQHC). The low-cost app will address infrastructure barriers that prevent delivery of such interventions
in point-of-care settings (i.e., community health centers) and will be delivered in Spanish to reduce language
barriers. This study represents an important and pivotal step in the larger landscape of translating basic
research to more efficacious strategies for reducing hazardous drinking in underserved populations with
biobehavioral comorbidities. We anticipate robust evidence for the feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility of
the Aliento mobile app that will support proceeding to Phase II development and evaluation. Aliento fills a
crucial niche as evidenced by requests from local community health center administrators and clinicians, is
based on a theoretically rich and empirically derived intervention and is practical enough to lend itself to mobile
delivery in community health centers. We strongly believe this intervention will offer a promising and profitable
approach to address alcohol/anxiety-related disparities among an underserved population.
