Transdisciplinary Research to Inform the Next Generation of Drug Use Prevention Messages

Communication messages and mass media campaigns have traditionally been used as strategies for preventing a range of risky behaviors, including substance use and substance related behaviors. These strategies have been popular given the potential for widespread reach at a relatively low cost. Despite popularity and continued widespread use of health communication messages and mass media campaigns, the evidence for these strategies in preventing substance use and related risk behaviors has been inconsistent. In July 2015 the National Institute on Drug Abuse convened a meeting that brought together neuroimaging researchers, prevention researchers and researchers from other diverse disciplines to discuss findings from studies funded under a prior Funding Opportunity Announcement on Brain Imaging Drug Use Prevention Messages. The purpose of this meeting was to stimulate transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary discussions about key findings that emerged from this body of work as well as other relevant findings that are emerging from the neurobiology and basic science fields, and how the findings can be translated to inform drug use prevention messages. This roundtable will bring together a multidisciplinary panel of experts from both the neurobiology, communication, and drug abuse and HIV prevention messaging fields who attended the meeting to engage in an interactive dialogue with the larger prevention science community about key findings and themes that have emerged from brain imaging studies of drug prevention messages, key research questions that brain imaging studies have been able to address, key questions that remain to be answered and can be informed by brain imaging and other basic science methods and measures, and ways the drug abuse prevention and neuroimaging/basic science fields can collaborate to move the field forward in developing the next generation of substance use prevention messages.  The panelists will speak to their work in the following areas:  basic and neurobiological mechanisms of prevention message content and features; utility of existing and emerging neuroimaging, dynamic computational models, and other basic science methods and measures for designing, personalizing, delivering and testing messages and campaigns; use of these novel methods and models to inform established methods of preventive health persuasion;  interaction of receiver and message characteristics; user-generated message content;  use of digital technologies to deliver and evaluate messages; and, linking neural responses to public service announcements and to population-level outcomes.