Susan L. Ames, Ph.D.
Dr. Ames research emphasis is on dual process models of addiction, the mediation of implicit associative processes, and competing social, personality, and cultural constructs in the etiology and prevention of risk behaviors (e.g., drug use and HIV-risk) among at-risk youth and adults. Her research focuses on new prevention and risk reduction strategies for addictive behaviors and new assessments and prediction models of substance abuse. Additional interests include neurobiological systems and brain structures associated with implicit associative processes and addictive behaviors.
C. Anderson Johnson, Ph.D.
Dr. Johnson’s work focuses on: prevention of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, prevention of HIV-AIDS, and prevention of obesity; social and environmental influences on health related behavior and health outcomes; domestic and international (transnational) health-related behaviors; and community and mass media approaches to prevention of chronic diseases and promotion of healthy lifestyles.
Darleen Schuster, Ph.D.
Dr. Schuster's research interests include health communication, specifically the evaluation of statewide tobacco control campaigns and the assessment of pro-tobacco marketing activities.
Alan Stacy, Ph.D.
Dr. Stacy has applied an associative memory framework grounded in basic research to the prediction of health behavior in a variety of populations. He has been principal investigator of a large NIH research center and a number of NIH-funded projects applying this approach to alcohol and other drug use among high-risk adolescents, adult drug offenders, and college students. He also has applied the approach in projects on the effects of alcohol advertising, HIV risk behavior, and drunk-driving. His most recent research evaluates dual-process models of health behavior, testing the effects of interactions between implicit memory systems and more deliberative (executive) systems. He also collaborates on research investigating the neural basis of links between associative memory and health behavior.
Dennis Trinidad, Ph.D.
Dr. Trinidad's research examines the social, environmental, and individual factors relevant to racial/ethnic disparities in health and health behaviors. His main research project involves the design and implementation of a parenting intervention to prevent problem behaviors, including smoking, in Filipino adolescents in Southern California. His second area of research focus examines ethnic differences in the effects of the California Tobacco Control Program. A third area of Dr. Trinidad's research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence (EI) on adolescent health behaviors.
Jennifer B. Unger, Ph.D.
Dr. Unger’s focus is on psychosocial and cultural predictors of substance use and other health-related behaviors among adolescents, including acculturation, cultural values, peer influences, family influences, and stressful life events. Dr. Unger is conducting several large-scale of adolescents’ health behaviors across cultural contexts. She has a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study drug use among Hispanic/Latino adolescents in Southern California, focusing on the effect of parent-child acculturation patterns on adolescent's drug use behavior. This project has shown that discrepancies in acculturation between adolescents and their parents can increase the risk of drug use among the adolescents, and it suggests that family-based prevention interventions could be effective. Dr. Unger plans to follow this cohort of adolescents after high school as they enter emerging adulthood, take on adult roles, and continue to make decisions about substance use. Dr. Unger also has a grant from the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) to examine attitudes toward commercial and sacred tobacco among American Indian adolescents in urban and rural areas of California. This project is collecting survey data from 1000 American Indian adolescents throughout the state to gain a more complete understanding of their understanding of the distinction between sacred and recreational tobacco use in their communities and the factors that influence their own decisions about tobacco use.
