Learn about our projects and pilot projects.
Our Projects
Project 1
Study Title: Onward Together to Enhance Resilience - Remote (OTTER-R)
Study Description:
The study tested two child development programs to support parents in treatment and recovery for substance use who had children aged birth to 48 months. Sessions focused on healthy child development and parent-child relationships through one-on-one coaching.
What did the study involve?
First, participants were asked to complete Zoom calls and electronic surveys from the comfort of their home and on their preferred schedule. Next, participants were offered an online 10-session personalized child development program delivered by trained coaches. Each session took about 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete.Then, participants completed the same Zoom calls and electronic surveys after the program and again around 3 months later. There were optional MRI brain scans. If eligible and interested, participants came to the University of Oregon campus and completed a scan of their brain at the beginning of the study and 2–3 months later.
Was it a paid study?
For taking part in the research, participants were paid up to a total of $360 for Zoom calls, surveys, and MRIs. For completing just the Zoom calls and surveys, participants received $240. Compensation was provided in the form of an Amazon gift card or check. Participants received the child-development program for free.
Project 2
Project Two was an adaptation and efficacy study of Family Check-Up Online (FCU), aimed at improving parenting skills in mothers with opioid misuse.
FCU-Online was an evidence-based intervention designed to reduce behavior problems and support successful development. The program was tested in rural Oregon and among mothers with young children. It contributed to our understanding of the pathways that can improve behavioral outcomes in children. This included parenting skills and maternal executive functioning as key mediators in the relationship between early risk and reduction of problem behavior. Project Two also received an administrative supplement as part of the NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Longterm (HEAL) initiative.
Project 3
Project Three examined 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 used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore the underlying neurocircuitry of the core cognitive and affective processes for mothers with OUD. Examining this helped us better understand how substance use impacts families..
Our Pilot Projects
Pilot Project 1
Pilot Project 1 explored how physical and mental health conditions – specifically chronic pain, substance use, and emotion dysregulation – related to parenting stress, parenting quality, and children’s mental health outcomes in a sample of mothers with elevated Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms. This study examined the extent to which the severity of chronic pain and/or the frequency and amount of substance use predicted the amount of parenting stress, the degree of parenting quality, and/or the number of children’s mental health problems. Participants completed an electronic daily diary once per day for 14 consecutive days. This provided insight into how changes in parenting stress, chronic pain, and substance use impacted parenting stress and parenting quality at the daily timescale.Study Title: Parenting, Emotion Regulation, and Substance Use (PERSU) StudyStudy Description: This study recruited mothers of young children who experienced emotional difficulties to participate in a study about Parenting, Emotion Regulation, & Substance Use – the PERSU study. Access to the Internet was required for participation.What did the study involve? Participants took part from their own location, completing either one or two electronic surveys from their own phone, computer, or other device:
- Screener Survey: a short survey to determine eligibility (~5 minutes)
- Main Survey: a long survey about mental health, emotions, chronic pain, substance use, parenting, and child behavior and mental health (~1 to 3 hours, including time for breaks)
Was it a paid study? Yes! Eligible participants who completed the Main Survey received a $60 electronic gift certificate to Amazon.com.
Pilot Project 2
Pilot Project 2 aimed to better understand the unique influence of opioid misuse on compromised fathering behaviors and how misuse uniquely affected intervention uptake. Using measures of parent efficacy, father identity, executive function, parenting behaviors, and connectedness, researchers evaluated cognitive and behavioral differences between a matched sample of fathers who misused opioids and non-using fathers. The intervention blended parent groups, online self-directed interactive training, and individual video feedback components. The pilot provided preliminary data on potential malleable factors specific to fathers who misused opioids.
Pilot Project 3
Pilot Project 3 focused on evaluating mentalizing-related cognitive processes and capacities in mothers who used opioids. It applied emerging knowledge and tools from social cognitive neuroscience to identify the neurocognitive mechanisms that could be targeted to improve mentalization-based therapeutic approaches for improving parental caregiving. The project examined the relationship between measures of mentalizing-related cognitive processes and individual characteristics of participants and their environments, 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 recruited mothers between the ages of 18–45. The study was conducted entirely online and took about 90 minutes. During the study, participants completed a series of tasks and surveys, as well as a short phone screening and follow-up. Participants were compensated $50.
Pilot Project 4
Pilot Project 4 refined and piloted the Coached Parent-Child program for corrections-involved parents using 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, aimed to promote positive parenting while preventing opioid misuse. The 4-session program combined information on effective parenting practices with issues related to correctional involvement and opioid misuse, with 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 were assessed at baseline, immediately post-intervention, and 3 months post-intervention on parenting practices, parent-child relationship, child adjustment, criminality, and opioid usage.
Pilot Project 6
Pilot Project 6 tested an integrated mental health and parenting intervention delivered via telehealth for emotionally dysregulated parents with a history of substance use. The 20-week group therapy integrated Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills—targeting parental emotion dysregulation and substance use—and Parent Training (PT)—targeting parenting behaviors linked to children’s mental health. The telehealth format enhanced scalability and reduced common barriers to access. The long-term goal was to develop an effective, widely disseminated intervention to reduce intergenerational transmission of mental disorders by improving parenting practices and emotion regulation.
Pilot Project 7
Pilot Project 7 aimed to better understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychosocial wellbeing, substance use, and parenting stress among pregnant and postpartum women. It examined the extent to which pandemic-related stress and decreased social support disproportionately impacted pregnant and postpartum women with a history of substance use. The study also evaluated whether a 4-week virtual social support and education group decreased general psychological and parenting-specific stress among perinatal women at increased risk for substance use.
Pilot Project 8
Hails: An Online Parenting Intervention for Families Affected by Substance Misuse in Pediatric Primary Care
This pilot study tested the feasibility and acceptability of a brief, app-based parenting intervention (Family Check-Up Online, FCU) delivered to parents reporting problematic substance use with young children in pediatric primary care. Feasibility and acceptability were evaluated by assessing parents’ engagement with the FCU Online app (e.g., time spent, activities completed, modules accessed) and through a consumer satisfaction survey. Researchers also conducted focus groups and qualitative interviews with pediatric healthcare providers to understand factors influencing FCU Online implementation.
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 aimed to develop a novel video-coding system to quantify responsive parenting behaviors in the context of OUD-specific parenting interventions. Aim 1 was to develop a viable video-coding system with the potential to efficiently and accurately evaluate responsive parenting behaviors within OUD populations. Aim 2 was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the FLO Coding Tool to establish the measure’s reliability and validity. And Aim 3 was to evaluate the FLO Coding Tool’s sensitivity to change. This research allowed 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 existed whereby the consequences of maternal incarceration on youth could be examined. Thus, the purpose of the pilot was to extend an ongoing longitudinal study on women with substance use histories and prior involvement in the juvenile- and adult criminal justice systems, then with a mean age of 33 years, with whom we had maintained contact and all of whom had children of their own. We assessed these women (Generation 1; G1) and a subset of their children, adolescents aged 13–17 (G2). This age range was selected because it represented a developmental stage marked by elevated risk for substance use onset and because it also mapped 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 had 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 proposal was to develop a preliminary knowledge base on the association between suicidality and substance use across the perinatal period. We accomplished this by building off an existing longitudinal study of suicidality in high-risk pregnant and postpartum women (two-thirds of whom were experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors). Our long-term goal was to utilize information gleaned toward proposing an R01 that would examine substance use in high-risk new mothers on a larger scale. Aim 1 was to examine concurrent associations between substance use and suicidal thoughts and behaviors at 6 weeks, 4 months, and 8 months postpartum. Aim 2 was to examine trajectories of substance use, abstinence, and relapse across 6 weeks, 4 months, and 8 months postpartum. Aim 3 was 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.