New Faculty Join Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Additions

The UNM Cen­ter on Alco­holism, Sub­stance Abuse, and Addic­tions (CASAA) has added two new fac­ulty mem­bers. Dr. Sarah Feld­stein Ewing is a clin­i­cal pedi­atric psy­chol­o­gist whose research focuses on ado­les­cent health risk behav­iors, and Dr. Katie Witkiewitz is a tenured asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy whose research focuses on empirically-based mod­els of addic­tive behaviors.

Ewing came to CASAA from the Mind Research Net­work to a tenure-track posi­tion as an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Uni­ver­sity Hon­ors Pro­gram. Her cur­rent research, now being con­ducted at CASAA, exam­ines health dis­par­i­ties and the dif­fer­en­tial effects of sub­stance abuse treat­ment for ado­les­cents from cul­tur­ally diverse back­grounds, and also devel­op­men­tal and neu­rocog­ni­tive fac­tors that affect response to treat­ment for high-risk adolescents.

Witkiewitz, who joined the UNM fac­ulty this fall from Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­sity, Van­cou­ver, is a tenured Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy. Her research has cen­tered on the study of alco­hol relapse and is based on a com­pre­hen­sive the­o­ret­i­cal model she devel­oped of the biopsy­choso­cial influ­ences on alco­hol use. Witkiewicz’ research applys advanced quan­ti­ta­tive research meth­ods to bet­ter under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of suc­cess­ful addic­tive behav­ior change.