# Youth Engagement:  An Organization-Level Strategy to Prevent Opioid Misuse among Young Adults

> **NIH NIH K01** · WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2020 · $149,013

## Abstract

Abstrac t Opioid misuse is a major public health issue among young adults in the United States and is an
especially acute problem in rural communities. Critically, prevention efforts for opioid misuse that serve young
people often do not effectively involve them. Prevention organizations would benefit from an effective youth
engagement strategy to incorporate the voices of young people in planning prevention programs and policy.
Further, young adulthood is a formative time for positive social development; but unfortunately, many young
people feel isolated within communities, feel that they do not matter, and lack meaningful opportunities to
engage with society and form positive connections with prosocial institutions. Prevention organizations lack
evidence-based strategy to marshal the considerable resources that young adults can bring to strengthening
prevention efforts by increasing their meaning and relevance for young adults; at the same time, young adults
may be at risk for opioid misuse in part due to isolation and lack of meaningful opportunities for engagement in
their communities. Engaging young people to contribute to the prevention organizations targeting substance
use may prevent opioid misuse by targeting two pathways: (1) an environmental pathway whereby young
adults affect community systems and settings through improving prevention efforts and (2) an individual
pathway bolstering psychosocial protective factors and reducing risks for the young adults engaged in
prevention efforts. Aligned with NIDA's HEAL initiative and the 2016-2020 strategic plan Objective 2.2, this K01
proposal seeks to elucidate the environmental and individual pathways through which youth engagement can
prevent opioid misuse. The research component of this mentored career development award will develop and
test an organization-level prevention strategy for effectively integrating meaningful youth engagement
opportunities into multi-component prevention efforts. The project will identify which community-based
prevention organizations, and which subset of young adults, would most benefit from youth engagement as a
strategy for preventing opioid misuse (Aim 1); develop an organization-level youth engagement prevention
strategy and implement it with one community-based organization to test feasibility and acceptability (Aim 2);
and evaluate the preliminary effectiveness of youth engagement as an organization-level strategy for
preventing opioid misuse in a small pilot randomized controlled trial (Aim 3). The training component of this
award will allow me to develop critical skills in (1) community-based systems and settings for substance use
prevention targeting vulnerable young adults; (2) opioid misuse among young adults in rural settings; (3)
prevention intervention development; and (4) randomized clinical trials research. With guidance from an
outstanding mentor team, this K01 will fully prepare me to become an independent investigator with the skills
to carry...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9892608
- **Project number:** 1K01DA048201-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Parissa Jahromi Ballard
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $149,013
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-05-01 → 2025-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9892608

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9892608, Youth Engagement:  An Organization-Level Strategy to Prevent Opioid Misuse among Young Adults (1K01DA048201-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9892608. Licensed CC0.

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