Major Gift Supports Substance Abuse
From the summer 2008 issue of UConn Momentum
A major gift to support drug and alcohol prevention research at the UConn Health Center will dramatically boost one of the nation’s leading programs in this area. The Diane Heath Beever Charitable Remainder Unitrust made the $500,000 endowed gift to support programs in the School of Medicine’s Department of Community Medicine and Health Care, including the Alcohol Research Center (ARC) in the Department of Psychiatry.
“We are very happy and very grateful for the gift,” says Thomas Babor, Ph.D., an associate director of the ARC and head of the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care. “This allows us the freedom to invest our resources in a way that will produce good, practical science and ultimately generate effective prevention and treatment programs.”
Babor says an early use of the Beever funds will be to focus on the study of alcohol advertising.
“We know that alcohol advertising influences young people to begin drinking earlier,” Babor says. “Now we’re developing procedures that will identify how advertising affects young people’s expectations of what alcohol will do for them, and how advertising gets vulnerable populations interested in drinking during their formative years.”
The cost of health and societal problems related to addiction is immense. Babor cites World Health Organization statistics that show addictive behaviors are a major risk factor for death and disability, accounting for as much as ten percent of the burden of all disease worldwide. Along with a direct connection to about 60 disease conditions, substance abuse and addiction are also closely tied to secondary effects like crime.
“We’re gaining a better understanding of the complicated interaction between the risk factors for tobacco, alcohol and drug misuse, and medical issues and social problems,” Babor says. “This is inherently an interdisciplinary field, and requires that we do work in areas ranging from genetics to public policy.”
UConn’s program is considered a national leader. Although it started in 1978 focusing on alcoholism, ARC now has programs that encompass the study of other psychoactive substances, as well as pathological gambling and HIV/AIDS. Its research has led to scientific advances in understanding the genetic factors behind alcoholism, the characteristics of at-risk children, cravings and the effects of alcohol/drugs on brain function. ARC was also responsible for developing the world’s most widely used alcohol screening test, and contributed to the development of both U.S. and international procedures for the diagnosis of alcohol dependence. In collaboration with the ARC, the Department of Community Medicine focuses on early interventions in primary health care and policy research that, on a population level, may lead to reductions of alcohol and drug abuse prevalence rates.
“Gifts like this symbolize a faith in the ability of science to produce answers to life's persistent questions of why people become addicted, and how to prevent substancerelated problems from happening in first place,” Babor adds, noting that a secondary benefit of the gift may be to attract young researchers to the addiction field.
“By attracting researchers in the early stages of their careers, we’re getting future scientists interested in research questions that will stay with them for the rest of their lives,” he says. “This is a great way to invest in the future of medical science.”
To support substance abuse prevention and treatment programs at the UConn Health Center, please contact the Office of Development & Alumni Relations.
