Center for Addiction & Prevention Research

About

The Center for Addiction and Prevention Research (CAPR) includes a dedicated group of multidisciplinary faculty and staff who aim to assess health risk behaviors, develop effective interventions and policies, and translate these into communities to reduce the associated health burdens.

CAPR research targets vulnerable populations throughout the United States, specifically military personnel and rural Appalachians. Our faculty, staff, and collaborators are located in multiple locations across the country. CAPR research focuses primarily on the three health behaviors that contribute the most to daily-adjusted life years lost in the United States: tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and overweight/obesity. A secondary focus is to develop effective interventions to curtail the growing opiate abuse epidemic in this country.

The CAPR team develops, translates and evaluates evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention interventions. Emphasis is placed on validated treatments that are affordable, and can be easily adopted and disseminated in community settings.

CAPR research is funded through the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.

Co-Directors: G. Wayne Talcott, Ph.D., ABPP, Col USAF (ret) & Robert C. Klesges, Ph.D.

Vision:

Be a leader in the creation of research collaborations with leading health research professionals and organizations to develop interventions that prevent or reduce the health burden for vulnerable populations, and to provide education and experiential training in community research for young professionals.

Mission:

Develop and evaluate evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention interventions that can easily be disseminated, implemented and maintained in community settings.

Selected Reports:

Klesges, R. C., Talcott, G. W., Oh, J., Colvin, L. W. (2014, Contributors). Tobacco Use in the Military. Changes in the Smoking-and-Health Environment: 1964 to 2014, A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA, Centers for Disease Control.

Haibach, JP, Glotfelter, MA, Hall, KS, Masheb, RM, Little, MA, Shepardson, RL, Dobmeyer, AC, Funderburk, JS, Hunter, CL, Dundon, M, Hausmann, LRM, Trynosky, SK, Goodrich, DE, Kilbourne, AM, Knight, SJ, Talcott, GW, Goldstein, MG (2016). Military and Veteran Health Behavior Research and Practice: Challenges and Opportunities. Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Selected Publications:

Talcott, G. W., Ebbert, J. O., Klesges, R. C., Linde, B. D., Krukowski, R., Seals, R., … & Martin Zona, D. (2015). Tobacco research in the military: Reflections from 20 years of research in the United States Air Force. Military Medicine, Aug;180(8):848-850.

Little MA, Talcott GW, Bursac Z, Linde BD, Pagano LA, Messler EC, Ebbert JO, Klesges RC. Efficacy of a brief tobacco intervention for tobacco and nicotine containing product use in the US Air Force. Nicotine Tob Res, 2016 May;18(5):1142-9 doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntv242.Epub 2015 Oct 27.

Cigrang, J., Talcott, G. W., Tatum, J., Baker, M., Cassidy, D., Sonnek, S., …& Slep, A. (2014). Impact of combat deployment on psychological and relationship health: A longitudinal study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 27, 1-8.

Klesges, R.C., Talcott, W., Ebbert, J. O., Murphy, J. G., McDevitt-Murphy, M., Thomas, F., … & Nicholas, R. A. (2013). Effect of the Alcohol Misconduct Prevention Program (AMPP) in Air Force technical training. Military Medicine, 178(4), 445-451. doi: 10.7205/MILMED-D-12-0040.