Kenzie L. Preston, Ph.D., Senior Investigator - Principal Investigators - The Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse

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PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

Kenzie L. Preston, Ph.D., Senior Investigator

CONTACT ME

NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse
Intramural Research Program
Treatment Section
251 Bayview Blvd. Suite 200
Baltimore, Maryland 21224

Voice: (443) 740-2326

Fax: (443) 740-2318

Email
kpreston@intra.nida.nih.gov

Kenzie L. Preston, Ph.D., Senior Investigator

Chief, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics Research Branch on-site page link

Post Doctoral Fellowship - Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baltimore, MD

Ph.D. - Pharmacology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

B.S. with Honors - Pharmacy, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL



RESEARCH INTERESTS

The goals of our research are to develop and test the efficacy and safety of new treatments for drug abuse and to understand the individual and environmental factors that affect drug taking and relapse. Our primary focus is on evaluating treatments for cocaine and opioid abuse, including both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic (psychosocial and behavioral) treatments. Related projects are evaluating the effects of specifically targeted counseling programs for reducing high-risk HIV-transmission behaviors, developing new screening and assessment tools (questionnaires, drug-screening methods) for testing potential treatment medications, and assessing the effects of patient characteristics (e.g., co-morbidity, family history, drug metabolism) on compliance, treatment outcome, and other clinical variables. Another major focus of our research is developing field tools to measure the effect of psychosocial stress as it actually occurs in daily life. With these tools, individuals with substance use disorders provide behavioral and physiological data in real time in their usual environments. Behavioral and physiological data are linked with a geographical location that can be codified in terms of objective ratings of neighborhood disarray, enabling us to relate indices of community-level risk to intensive field measurements of individual attempts at behavior change. The field measurements are supplemented with laboratory data from the same pool of participants, enabling assessment of dysregulation of biological responses to stress and its association with time spent in particular environments. The field tools will also enable a more sophisticated, integrative approach to the study of interactions between genes and environment in determining health outcomes.



Selected Publications:
  1. Epstein, D.H., Marrone, G.F., Heishman, S.J., Schmittner, J.P., and Preston, K.L. (2010) Cocaine and tobacco: Craving and use during daily life. Addictive Behaviors, 35, 318-324.

  2. Preston, K.L., Vahabzadeh, M., Schmittner, J.P., Lin, J.-L., Gorelick, D.A., and Epstein, D.H. (2009) Cocaine craving predicts cocaine use during daily life. Psychopharmacology, 207, 291-301.

  3. Epstein, D.H., Willner-Reid, J., Vahabzadeh, M., Mezghanni, M., Lin, J. L., & Preston, K.L. (2009). Real-time electronic-diary reports of cue exposure and mood in the hours before drug craving and use. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66, 88-94.

  4. Epstein, D.H., Schmittner, J.P., Umbricht, A., Schroeder, J.R., Moolchan, E.T., & Preston, K.L. (2009). Promoting abstinence from cocaine and heroin with a methadone dose increase and a novel contingency. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 101(1-2), 92-100.

  5. Vahabzadeh, M., Lin, J. L., Mezghanni, M., Epstein, D.H., & Preston, K.L. (2009). Automation in an addiction treatment research clinic: Computerized contingency management, ecological momentary assessment, and a protocol workflow system. Drug and Alcohol Review, 28(1), 3-11.

  6. Ghitza, U.E., Epstein, D.H., & Preston, K.L. (2007). Psychosocial functioning and cocaine use during treatment: strength of relationship depends on type of urine-testing method. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 91(2-3), 169-77.

  7. Epstein, D.H., Preston, K.L., Stewart, J., & Shaham Y. (2006). Toward a model of drug relapse: An assessment of the validity of the reinstatement procedure. Psychopharmacology, 189(1), 1-16.

  8. Epstein, D., Hawkins, W., Covi, L., Umbricht, A., & Preston, K.L. (2003). Cognitive-behavioral therapy plus contingency management for cocaine use: Findings during treatment and across 12-month follow-up. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 17, 73-82.

  9. Preston, K.L., Umbricht, A., & Epstein, D.H. (2000). Methadone dose increase and abstinence reinforcement for treatment of continued heroin use in methadone maintenance patients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 57, 395-404.

  10. Silverman, K., Higgins, S.T., Brooner, R.K., Montoya, I.D., Cone, E.J., Schuster, C.R., et al. (1996). Sustained cocaine abstinence in methadone maintenance patients through voucher-based reinforcement therapy. Archives of General Psychiatry, 53, 409-415.

About Dr. Preston's...

IRP Training Opportunities...


2009 Postbacs
Postdoc, Predoc, Postbac and Summer Student training opportunities available!


2009 Summer Students
Research & Training Program for Under-represented Populations

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The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the principal biomedical and behavioral research agency of the United States Government. NIH is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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