Black Hazardous Drinkers: Ecological Momentary Assessment of Racial/Ethnic Microaggressions

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Project Summary/Abstract Despite being one of the largest racial minority groups in the United States (U.S.), Black individuals experience striking health disparities, particularly in terms of drinking-related outcomes. One possible reason for this is that Black individuals in the U.S. are disproportionately affected by stressful life conditions, including race-based discrimination, which may lead to higher rates of hazardous drinking. Subtle race-based discrimination at the daily level, known as racial/ethnic microaggressions (MAs), is common among Black persons, and may be an under recognized factor that accounts for significant and unique variance in alcohol use motivation and hazardous drinking. The goal of this R21 project, which is in direct response to PA #20-195, is to elucidate the role of MAs in hazardous drinking and alcohol use motivation among Black individuals using time sampling methodology (over the course of 21 days). Participants (N=100; 50% female) will be Black adults meeting criteria for current hazardous drinking. Further, the present proposal will determine whether negative affect (e.g., anxiety, depression, anger) in response to MA accounts for the relation between MAs and alcohol use motivation (i.e., greater alcohol craving, intention to drink, and coping-oriented motives for alcohol use) and drinking (i.e., greater alcohol consumption, greater frequency of drinking, and more negative consequences from drinking), and test theoretically driven culturally relevant resilience factors, including religiosity and ethnic identity, and positive coping strategies. This proposal can significantly advance our knowledge of precursors to alcohol misuse and related problems within the Black community and provide critical insight for future prevention and intervention programs. The proposed research project supports the 2022-2026 proposed strategic plan of the National Institute of National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) by addressing cross-cutting themes such as: (1) promoting health equity and enhance diversity and inclusion in the alcohol research enterprise, and (2) advancing research on co-occurring conditions (in this case, race- based stress and associated negative affect) that interact with alcohol misuse; it further addresses the strategic plan’s goal to “identify and track the biological, social, environmental, and behavioral causes and consequences of alcohol misuse.” Further, the proposed project is in line with NIH’s UNITE initiative’s aim to support “new research on health disparities, minority health, and health equity”.