News and Events

Do you have an addiction-related research idea you’ve always wanted to explore? Workshop it in a MI-ACRE Innovation Session! Email MI-ACRE Program Coordinator, Lisa Sulkowski, to schedule!

Dr. Coughlin and the CHOICE team are leading a new quality improvement project to address health disparities related to cigarette smoking among Medicaid recipients throughout Michigan 

• • Check it out HERE!

The Michigan Health Endowment Fund is providing funding to support Incentives2Quit, an incentive-based tobacco treatment program led by Dr. Lara Coughlin. Learn more about Incentives2Quit.

April 8th, 2025: PCORI has awarded Dr. Coughlin and co-investigator Erin E. Bonar, PhD funding for a large randomized study to compare Tobacco Quitline coaching with and without an incentive program involving daily breath monitoring for menthol cigarette cessation. Learn more from this Michigan Medicine Press Release.

March 10th, 2025: Dr. Coughlin was a guest on The Addiction Psychologist podcast to discuss the science of contingency management. Check out the podcast here.

February 19th, 2025: “Building Community Partnerships: Expanding STEM Career Visibility in Elementary Schools” led by Dr. Devin Tomlinson - a MI-ACRE Innovation Session.

• • MI-ACRE Innovation Sessions are casual gatherings designed to foster innovative conversations around addiction prevention and care. Details are on the event page.

January 21, 2025: Drs. Lara Coughlin and Anne Fernandez spoke on Digital Contingency Management for Substance Use Disorders on Zoom as part of the Opioid Settlement Technical Assistance Collaborative. Learn more here.

January 2025: Dr. Devin Tomlinson led a paper summarizing the outcomes of qualitative interviews completed by Chelsea Wilkins, LMSW, and Dr. Lara Coughlin. Tobacco Cessation Champions were invited to the interview to help the team better understand the barriers and opportunities to improving tobacco cessation services in Michigan.

December 17, 2024: Dr. Lara Coughlin and Dr. Anne Fernandez have received an NIH-funded R34 grant to pilot a statewide smartphone incentive program: Cultivating Recovery: A Pilot Study of Digital Contingency Management for Co-occurring Opioid and Alcohol Use Disorder. This grant is funded through the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative and focuses on using a digital contingency management intervention to help address polysubstance use, specifically opioid and alcohol use. Read more about it in the U-M Press Release!

May 13, 2025: The PC CARES ASU team presented at the first Pathways to Recovery conference in Anchorage, Alaska. The presentation titled “Transforming Bite-Sized Research Into Action: Promoting Community Conversations to Prevent and Reduce Harm from At-Risk Substance Use” was presented by Lisa Wexler, PhD, Lara Coughlin, PhD, Chelsea Wilkins, LMSW, and Tara Schmit, MPH

• • This interaction session will preview a forthcoming curriculum that offers evidence-based tools to prevent harms from at-risk substance use: Promoting Community Conversations About Research for Effective Solutions – At-risk Substance Use (PC CARES-ASU). Facilitators will share practical, evidence-based best practices with participants who will interpret, discuss, and apply the information to their lives and work. Feedback and dialogue from this session will inform an educational intervention that invites dialogue to develop ‘Communities of Practice’ where grassroots solutions to complex community issues emerge through cross-sector engagement at the local level. PC CARES “learning circles” each shared a “bite-sized” piece of research evidence as a catalyst to community conversations about complex issues related to at-risk substance use. Exchanging ideas, strategies, and possibilities for how to use the small, actionable tidbits of research evidence in their lives, participants will leave this session with strategies to promote mental wellness and guard against at-risk substance use.

May 7, 2025: 35th Annual Albert J. Silverman Research Conference in Ann Arbor, MI. The CHOICE Lab presented six posters! Check them out below. 

• • Hybrid human-digital motivational incentive intervention for smoking cessation among perinatal Medicaid patients – presented by Addison Carriere and Amrita Kondur

  • Key Themes of Barriers and Facilitators to Smoking Cessation in Michigan: A Rapid Qualitative Analysis of Michigan Tobacco Cessation Champions – presented by Chelsea Wilkins

  • Ecological Momentary Assessments in an Incentive-Based Intervention for Smoking Cessation: Predicting Near-term Engagement and Smoke Status – presented by Vivian Kaufman

May 21, 2024: Dr. Lara Coughlin, Dr. Tomlinson, and Chelsea Wilkins, LMSW facilitated a workshop, "The Tobacco Endgame: What does this mean for peers?" at the Michigan Peers Conference in Novi, MI

October 9, 2024: Dr. Devin Tomlinson recently was accepted to and participated in the FAIR Summit for d3c. Her presentation was titled “Contingency Management for Alcohol Use with Micro-Randomized Messages and Reinforcers”.

Natalie Bayrakdarian led a paper centered on the outcomes of the acceptability and feasibility of a mobile behavioral economic health intervention to reduce alcohol use in adults in rural areas

See Citation Below: 

• Bayrakdarian, N. D., Bonar, E. E., Duguid, I., Hellman, L., Salino, S., Wilkins, C., Jannausch, M., McKay, J. R., Staton, M., Dollard, K., Nahum-Shani, I., Walton, M. A., Blow, F. C., & Coughlin, L. N. (2024). Acceptability and feasibility of a mobile behavioral economic health intervention to reduce alcohol use in adults in rural areas. Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, 11, 100225.

Sahana Lothumalla conducted research in the 2023 and 2024 MD Anderson CPRIT CURE Summer Research Program and presented in both 2023 and 2024 Summer Research Conferences

See Citation Below:

• Lothumalla, S., Islam, S., Netto, F., Xie, T., Akhter, S., Debnath, K., Myers, B., Miller, J., Hutchinson, K., & Amit, M. (2023). Association of cholinergic nociceptive nerve population on functional outcomes of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

• Lothumalla, S., Miertschin, L., McCarthy, W., Kottukkal, T., Ciacciofera, N., Debnath, K. C., Sathishkumar, H., Naara, S., Netto, F., & Amit, M. (2024). Cancer-associated neuroplasticity and dendritogenesis. Head and Neck Surgery.

Vivian Kaufman won a first-place award for her poster “Ecological Momentary Assessments in an Incentive-Based Intervention for Smoking Cessation: Predicting Near-term Engagement and Smoke Status” at the 35th Annual Albert J. Silverman Research Conference in Ann Arbor, MI

• May 22, 2024: 34th Annual Albert J. Silverman Research Conference in Ann Arbor, MI. The CHOICE Lab presented three posters! Check them out below. 

  • Applying novel behavioral economic measures to understand opioid-related polysubstance use – presented by Jordan Diamond

  • Pilot implementation of a motivational incentive smoking cessation program for rural Medicaid patients – presented by Chelsea Wilkins

  • Demographic Differences in Receiving Medications for Alcohol Use Disorder: Data from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health – presented by Devin C. Tomlinson, PhD

• May 10, 2023: 33rd Annual Albert J. Silverman Research Conference in Ann Arbor, MI. The CHOICE Lab presented three posters! Check them out below.

  • Initial development and refinements of a mobile health intervention to reduce at-risk alcohol use in rural populations – presented by Natalie Bayrakdarian and Sahana Lothumalla

  • Preferences and predictors driving opioid-involved polysubstance use: A longitudinal cohort study within two health systems – presented by Chavez R. Rodriguez
    
    

• November 10, 2023: The inaugural MeTRIC Symposium was held at the North Campus Research Complex in Ann Arbor, MI. The poster on the outcomes of BETTER Living Aim 2 –“Acceptability and Feasibility of a Mobile Health Intervention Grounded in Behavioral Economics to Reduce Alcohol Use and Improve Health in Rural-Dwelling Adults with At-risk Alcohol Use” was presented by Natalie Bayrakdarian and Sahana Lothumalla