The Development of Alcohol Use and Alcohol Disorders Across the Lifespan

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a new application for a Senior Scientist Research and Mentorship Award (K05). The applicant, Michael Windle, Rollins Endowed Professor of Public Health and Chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education (BSHE) at Emory University, proposes to provide mentoring to three outstanding tenure-track faculty members. Two of the applicants to be mentored are assistant professors in BSHE, and the third is from a nearby university and has been mentored by the applicant for the last three-years. All three of these mentees have excellent publication records, have published studies on alcohol and other substance use, have demonstrated interest in pursuing NIAAA R01 awards, and none has received funding at the R01 level. Two of the mentees currently have K01 awards. All three mentees have an interest in developing further their knowledge of alcohol studies, the use of advanced longitudinal statistical methods in their research, and the incorporation gene-environment (GE) relations as they prepare NIH applications. For all applicants, mentoring goals involve providing guidance and support with respect to writing competitive grant proposals, further developing the mentees' research programs, and a further focus on more general professional development, including working with mentees on their own effectiveness as mentors to graduate students and postdoctoral trainees. With respect to his Research Plan, the applicant proposes to continue to pursue a research program that applies a lifespan developmental psychopathology perspective in alcohol studies with particular emphasis on understanding stability and change in alcohol use and alcohol disorders across the lifespan (e.g., changes associated with transitions from adolescence to emerging adulthood to young adulthood; changes from middle-age to older adulthood), transitions in drinking status across time (e.g., light drinker to heavy drinker; heavy drinker to light drinker or abstainer), and the tme invariant and time-varying risk and protective predictors of these changes across the life course. Using several existing and ongoing longitudinal data sets, the applicant proposes to continue research on the developmental- etiologic factors that influence alcohol phenotypes across time and for different racial/ethnic groups. Specific emphasis is focused on the analyses of prospective panel data and GE relations that provide novel opportunities to study prominent developmental processes related to alcohol phenotypes in a highly refined and nuanced way that incorporates both G and E factors and their interactions as they unfold across time. Alcohol prevention programs for public health are best guided by models that ncorporate the time-changing, multiplicity of genetic (G), environmental (E) factors that underlie the etiology and time-course of alcohol misuse and alcohol disorders. A new generation of mentored scientists with the necessary skills to conduct such analyses could rapidly advance the alcohol studies field and greatly facilitate efforts to reduce underage drinking and associated adverse health consequences across the lifespan.