Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies

Our Impact

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Our Impact

We share a drive to make meaningful change in the lives of people with substance use disorders and to improve society by reducing harms from substance use and addiction.

This commitment has led to significant advances in addiction research, teaching, engagement and advocacy. Achievements of CAAS faculty include:

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Treatment

  • Testing the only two drugs to treat alcohol use disorder to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in the last 30 years. These medications have been used by hundreds of thousands of people nationwide.
  • Providing evidence that reduced-nicotine cigarettes can reduce tobacco addiction. This research was used by the U.S. FDA to propose a new rule to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.
  • Adapting motivational interviewing as a harm reduction tool, from reducing alcohol use in people with HIV to reducing cannabis use in adolescents.

Research

  • Leading innovative technology-driven research and interventions, including the use of wearable sensors, mobile apps, and smart phone surveys.
  • Launching studies that continue to expand the boundaries of addiction science, from determining the effects of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic on drug cravings to exploring the relationship between stress and addiction.
  • Establishing early evidence for cue reactivity, a learned response for people with substance use disorders. Seeing a glass of beer, smelling a cigarette, or receiving other cues can trigger cravings and other neurological responses associated with addiction.
  • Launching pathbreaking research projects, including the first to test a new treatment that combines talk therapy with psychedelics to treat military veterans with PTSD and alcohol use disorder and the first to study the interactions between children and mothers who used cannabis while pregnant.
  • Breaking new ground in understanding real-world behavior and the mechanisms of behavior change, and studying substance use and addiction in diverse populations, work that makes addiction science more reliable, actionable, personalized, and effective.

Training + Outreach

  • Leading America’s most respected postdoctoral training program for addiction researchers, producing over 200 addiction science leaders helping reduce the toll of addiction through research, clinical care, and policy change.
  • Training thousands of addiction treatment professionals, from counselors to nurses to outreach workers to program directors, through the New England Addiction Technology Transfer Center.
  • Pioneering substance use disorder training for primary care physicians to diagnose and treat addiction in the community. This national work was spearheaded by CAAS founder David Lewis, MD., who successfully lobbied for insurance billing codes for substance use screening and treatment.

Policy + Education

  • Blazing a trail for harm reduction by forming Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy, which helped shift national understanding of addiction as a chronic, relapsing disorder - one that can be treated.
  • Creating a medical school curriculum – adopted by 80% of U.S. medical schools – that infused addiction studies into primary care training. The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in 2017 became the first U.S. medical school to train students to prescribe opioid use disorder medications.
  • Making Rhode Island a national model for treating opioid use disorder in the criminal justice system. CAAS researchers have trained judges, lawyers, wardens, probation officers and other corrections professionals from across the country and developed a toolkit for community corrections officers.