Learn about our ongoing projects and pilot projects.
Our Projects
Project One
Study Title: Onward Together to Enhance Resilience - Remote (OTTER-R)
Study Description:
The study is testing two child development programs to support parents in treatment and recovery for substance use who have children ages birth to 48 months. Sessions focus on healthy child development and parent-child relationships through one-on-one coaching.
What does the study involve?
First, participants will be asked to complete Zoom calls and electronic surveys from the comfort of their home, and on their preferred schedule.
Next, participants will be offered an online 10-session personalized child development program delivered by trained coaches. Each session takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete.
Then, participants will complete the same Zoom calls and electronic surveys after the program and again around 3 months later.
There are optional MRI brain scans. If eligible and interested, you will come to the University of Oregon campus and complete a scan of your brain at the beginning of the study, and 2-3 months later. Is it a paid study? Yes! For taking part in this research, participants may be paid up to a total of $360 for Zoom calls, surveys, and MRIs. For doing just the Zoom calls and surveys, participants will receive $240. Compensation will be in the form of an Amazon gift card or check. Participants will receive the child-development program for free.
To take the screening questionnaire and see if you’re eligible, click here.
Click here to see our website. If you have questions, please email our study team at uootterstudy@uoregon.edu or call/text 541-632-4005.
Project Two
Project Two is an adaption and efficacy study of Family Check-Up Online (FCU), to improve parenting skills in mothers with opioid misuse.
FCU-Online is an evidence-based intervention to reduce behavior problems and support successful development. The program is being tested in rural Oregon and among mothers with young children. It will contribute to our understanding of the pathways that can improve behavioral outcomes in children. This includes parenting skills and maternal executive functioning as key mediators in the relationship between early risk and reduction of problem behavior. Project Two was also awarded an administrative supplement is as part of the NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Longterm (HEAL) initiative. Find out more.
Project Three
Project Three examines the relationship between core cognitive and affective processes, reward sensitivity, stress reactivity/regulation, and inhibitory control, over the first year postpartum in women with and without Opioid Use Disorder (OUD).
Project 3 also uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore the underlying neurocircuitry of the core cognitive and affective processes for mothers with OUD. Examining this will help us better understand how substance use impacts families.
Our Pilot Projects
Pilot Project 1
Pilot Project 1 explores how physical and mental health conditions – specifically chronic pain, substance use, and emotion dysregulation – relate to parenting stress, parenting quality, and children’s mental health outcomes in a sample of mothers with elevated Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms. This study examines the extent to which the severity of chronic pain and/or the frequency and amount of substance use predict the amount of parenting stress, the degree of parenting quality, and/or the number of children’s mental health problems. Participants complete an electronic daily diary once per day for 14 consecutive days. This may give insight into how changes in parenting stress, chronic pain, and substance use impact parenting stress and parenting quality at the daily timescale.
Study Title: Parenting, Emotion Regulation, and Substance Use (PERSU) Study Study Description: Are you the mother of a young child? Do you struggle with your emotions? We are looking for mothers of young children who experience emotional difficulties to participate in a study about Parenting, Emotion Regulation, & Substance Use – the PERSU study. Access to the Internet is required for participation. What does the study involve?You can participate from your own location, completing either one or two electronic surveys from your own phone, computer, or other device:Screener Survey: a short survey to see if you qualify to participate in this study (~5 minutes)Main Survey: a long survey about your mental health, emotions, chronic pain, substance use, parenting, and also your child’s behaviors and mental health (~1 to 3 hours, including time for you to take breaks and return to the survey) Is it a paid study?Yes! You will earn a $60 electronic gift certificate to Amazon.com if you are eligible for and complete the Main Survey*.*If your data are flagged as suspicious (from a bot, for example), then we may remove your responses, and you may not be paid. To take the screener survey, click this link: https://oregon.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5nhwzfgmpXSWzoW If you have questions, please contact our study team by phone: 541-346-7054 or email: perostudy@uoregon.edu
Pilot Project 2
Pilot Project 2 seeks to better understand the unique, specific, influence of opioid misuse on compromised fathering behaviors, and, further, how misuse uniquely affects the process of intervention uptake. Using measures of parent efficacy, father identity, executive function, parenting behaviors, and connectedness, we will evaluate and identify cognitive and behavioral differences between a matched sample of fathers who misuse opioids and non-using fathers. The intervention blends parent groups, online self-directed interactive training, and individual video feedback components. The pilot will provide preliminary data on potential malleable factors specific to fathers who misuse opioids.
Pilot Project 3
Pilot Project 3 focuses on evaluating mentalizing-related cognitive processes and capacities in mothers who use opioids. Pilot Project 3 applies emerging knowledge and tools from the discipline of social cognitive neuroscience related to the cognitive processes involved in mentalizing to identify the neurocognitive mechanisms that could be targeted to improve mentalization-based therapeutic approaches to improve parental caregiving in mothers who use opioids. Pilot Project 3 examines the relationship between measures of mentalizing-related cognitive processes to individual characteristics of a participant and her environment, including age, income, education, housing status, environmental predictability, neighborhood, discrimination, family conflict, maternal history of adversity, and access to social support.
The Developing Brains in Context Lab at the University of Oregon is recruiting participants for this study! We are looking for mothers between the ages of 18-45. The study will be conducted entirely online, and will take about 90 minutes. During the study, you will be asked to complete a series of tasks and surveys, as well as a short phone screening and follow-up. You will be compensated $50 for your participation. Please contact DevBrainLab@uoregon.edu or call (541) 525-0455 if you’re interested in participating.
Pilot Project 4
Pilot Project 4 refines and pilots the Coached Parent-Child program for corrections-involved parents using telecommunications technologies (i.e., Zoom) with a sample of parents and their children (ages 0 – 10 years) from Lane County. The Coached Parent-Child program, a brief, family-centered, cognitive-behavioral, telehealth intervention, is designed to promote positive parenting while preventing opioid misuse for corrections-involved parents with a history of opioid problems. The 4-session program combines information on effective parenting practices while addressing issues related to the parent’s correctional-involvement and opioid misuse with the goals of 1) creating a smooth transition from prison to family and community, 2) preventing recidivism and opioid misuse, and 3) promoting better outcomes for children and families. Participants will be assessed three times (baseline, immediately after intervention, and 3-months post-intervention) on parenting practices, parent-child relationship, child adjustment, criminality, and opioid usage.
Pilot Project 6
Pilot Project 6 test an integrated mental health and parenting intervention delivered via telehealth for emotionally dysregulated parents with a history of substance use, in order to complete several foundational steps prior to conducting a larger-scale randomized controlled trial. The proposed 20-week group therapy will integrate two evidence-based interventions: 1) Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills - targeting parental emotion dysregulation and substance use, and 2) Parent Training (PT) - targeting parenting behaviors linked to children’s mental health. The telehealth format will enhance the scalability of the intervention and reduce many of the common barriers to access that parents face when seeking treatment for themselves or their children. Pilot Project 6’s long-term goal is to develop an effective, and broadly disseminated intervention that significantly reduces the intergenerational transmission of a wide range of mental disorders by intervening on parenting practices and emotion dysregulation in parents.
Pilot Project 7
Pilot Project 7 seeks to better understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychosocial wellbeing, substance use, and parenting stress among pregnant and postpartum women. Pilot Project 7 examines the extent to which pandemic-related stress and decreased social support disproportionately impacts pregnant and postpartum women with a history of substance use. This study also evaluates whether a 4- week virtual social support and education group decreases general psychological and parenting-specific stress among perinatal women who are at a significantly increased risk for substance use in pregnancy, post postpartum, or currently in treatment for an SUD.
Pilot Project 8
Hails: An Online Parenting Intervention for Families Affected by Substance Misuse in Pediatric Primary Care
The main objective of the proposed pilot study is to test the feasibility and acceptability of a brief, app-based parenting intervention (Family Check-Up Online, FCU) delivered to parents reporting problematic substance use who have young children in pediatric primary care. We will evaluate feasibility and acceptability by systematically assessing parents’ engagement with the FCU Online app (e.g., time spent in app, activities completed, modules accessed) and administering a consumer satisfaction survey, which will ask parents to report on their perceptions of the app (e.g., helpfulness, usability, and effects on parenting). We will also conduct semi-structured focus groups and qualitative interviews with pediatric healthcare providers (e.g., pediatricians, nurse practitioners, behavioral health team members) to understand provider- and practice-level factors that many facilitate or impede the implementation of the FCU Online in their practice setting.
Pilot Project 9
Imhof: Development of the FLO Video-Coding Tool to Evaluate Responsive Caregiver-Child Interactions
Given the paucity of observational coding measures appropriate for use with people with Opioid Use Disorders (OUD), this project aims to develop a novel video-coding system to quantify responsive parenting behaviors in the context of OUD-specific parenting interventions. Aim 1 is to develop a viable video-coding system with the potential to efficiently and accurately evaluate responsive parenting behaviors within OUD populations. Aim 2 is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the FLO Coding Tool to establish the measure’s reliability and validity. And Aim 3 is to evaluate the FLO Coding Tool’s sensitivity to change. This proposed research will allow us to complete development of the FLO Coding Tool and evaluate its psychometric validity and sensitivity to change in the context of a) a high adversity sample from a prior clinical trial of the Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) intervention and b) a sample of mothers with OUD from Project 3.
Pilot Project 10
Schweer-Collins: Opportunities to Interrupt Cycles of Substance Use: An Intergenerational Study of Mothers Affected by Prior Justice System Involvement and Their Children
Despite the critical importance of research to understand and intervene on the complex cycles of intergenerational incarceration and SUD, few prospective, longitudinal studies exist whereby the consequences of maternal incarceration on youth can be examined. Thus, the purpose of the proposed pilot is to extend an ongoing longitudinal study on women with substance use histories and prior involvement in the juvenile- and adult criminal justice systems, now mean age 33 years, with whom we have maintained contact and all of whom have children of their own. We propose to assess these women (Generation 1; G1) and a subset of their children, adolescents ages 13-17 (G2). This age range was selected because it represents a developmental stage marked by elevated risk for substance use onset and because it also maps onto the original G1 assessment age.
Pilot Project 11
Skoranski: Substance Use and Risk for Suicide: Experiences of High-Risk Postpartum Women
Trajectories of substance use across the perinatal period and associations with suicidal thoughts and behaviors have not been examined. In line with CPO’s aim of improving the well-being of individuals, families, and communities affected by the opioid crisis, the overall objective of the current proposal is to develop a preliminary knowledge base on the association between suicidality and substance use across the perinatal period. We will accomplish this by building off an existing longitudinal study of suicidality in high-risk pregnant and postpartum women (2/3 of whom are currently experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors). Our long term goal is to utilize information gleaned toward proposing an R01 that would examine substance use in high-risk new mothers on a larger scale. Aim 1 is to examine concurrent associations between substance use and suicidal thoughts and behaviors at 6 weeks, 4 months, and 8 months postpartum. Aim 2 is to examine trajectories of substance use, abstinence, and relapse across 6 weeks, 4 months, and 8 months postpartum. Aim 3 is to examine mechanisms of substance use relapse in postpartum women, using daily diary data to assess the intercorrelations between parenting stress, emotion regulation, and substance use.