Aug. 13, 2010 | A $1.5 million federal grant to examine differences between rural and urban African-American drug users is intended to find ways to encourage both groups to seek treatment.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), will be comparing rural and urban African-American cocaine users’ perceptions of their need for drug abuse treatment and HIV testing.

“We’ll be looking at the factors associated with differences between urban and rural cocaine users and their perceived need for both drug abuse treatment and getting tested for HIV,” said Ty Borders, Ph.D., principal investigator and professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the UAMS College of Public Health.

“By examining perceived need for treatment we ultimately will be able to better understand how to encourage people to seek treatment,” he said of the three-year project.

The study, a collaborative effort between co-investigators at the College of Public Health and the Psychiatric Research Institute, builds on previous research done on specific drug abuse patterns of African-American and Caucasian stimulant users in rural areas.

“We have information on how frequently drugs are used, how many people have quit using, how many have tried to quit, how many have sought drug use treatment services – all in rural settings,” Borders said. “But we didn’t have any comparison to an urban population, and there are still lots of questions about differences in cultures between rural and urban settings and differences in access to treatment.”

Borders said the vast majority who use and abuse drugs never get treatment..

“We also know from previous studies that many people who engage in drug use also don’t get tested for HIV even though their behavior puts them at a very high risk to contract that disease,” he said.

Quantitative and qualitative interviews of 460 African-American cocaine users will be sought among rural populations in Marianna and Forrest City, and an urban population in Little Rock.

“Most research on drug abuse is done in treatment settings, while with this one we’ll be going into these communities and talking to people on the street,” Borders said. “We’ll ask them to come to the study sites and we’ll be able to gather all kinds of valuable information we hope will result in improved access totreatment and a healthier Arkansas.”

The research grant is unique to the College of Public Health because it is the first of its kind awarded to the Department of Health Policy and Management.

Jim Raczynski, Ph.D., dean of the College of Public Health, said it’s also unique because it is the first proposal he’s seen that received a perfect score from the NIH in the review process.

“That is an extremely rare feat and speaks to the quality of the proposal and the integral questions being asked,” Raczynski said. “I’ve been in this line of work for a long time and that just doesn’t happen very often.”