Our Funding
Our work is funded by research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, and the Columbia University Global Mental Health Programs.
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This experimental study tests the impacts of subsidized ridesharing on drunk driving, alcohol consumption, and mobility. This information is critical because alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes are a major cause of death and injury, and preliminary studies provide compelling evidence that subsidized ridesharing may be a high-impact prevention strategy. Results of this study will provide important information to guide preventive interventions that use subsidized ridesharing to reduce alcohol-involved crashes—including identifying the individuals who will benefit most substantially and the locations where impacts will be greatest—while minimizing side-effects on alcohol consumption.
Links to studies: Ridesharing, Retail Alcohol Outlets, Built Environments
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With CDC funding support, the GAPS lab is leading an evaluation of the Vision Zero initiative to reduce road traffic crashes in New York City. We are treating changes to our city's transportation infrastructure as a quasi-experiment, and will identify intervention types with the greatest benefits for safety. This study is a core research project within the Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention (CCISP) 2024-2029.
Links to studies: Built Environments
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Preventing firearm violence is a high priority for research, but data are sparse. A social ecological systems framework provides a theoretical basis for understanding the complex processes that contribute to individuals’ risks for firearm violence victimization and perpetration, and emphasizes that contributors to firearm violence operate at multiple scales of organization (e.g., individuals, households, neighborhoods, cities, states) and over the lifecourse. To examine these complex processes we require longitudinal data collected at the individual level over many years, including detailed measurement of outcomes and theoretically relevant exposures related to firearm violence. We will use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to investigate individuals' risks for firearm violence perpetration and victimization over time.
Links to studies: Gun Violence, Built Environments
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The GAPS Lab is part of the Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention, a CDC-funded Injury Control Research Center. Our team led one of the four major research projects that comprise CCISP during the previous funding cycle for 2019-2024 . Our observational study used trip-level rideshare data to examine the impacts of ridesharing on motor vehicle crashes in NYC.
Links to studies: Built Environments, Ridesharing, Retail Alcohol Outlets
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This research assesses whether and how different configurations of roadside sobriety testing checkpoints affect rates of alcohol-involved crashes within cities. Although it is clear that jurisdictions with roadside sobriety testing programs have lower rates of alcohol-involved crashes, available evidence provides no guidance for local law enforcement as to where and when they should locate individual checkpoints to maximally reduce crash rates. Our findings will inform recommendations regarding the best place and time to locate checkpoints within cities, and will therefore directly inform improvements to an intervention with demonstrated public health benefit.
Links to studies: Sobriety Checkpoints
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This study examines inter-relationships between adolescents’ alcohol consumption, their in- person social networks, their digital social networks, and the neighborhoods in which they live. Studies of social networks emphasize that reducing alcohol consumption for a single adolescent will reduce alcohol consumption for many members of an in-person social network, however it is unclear how widely these effects occur across a network, how neighborhood conditions affect the relationships, and whether these findings generalize to digital social networks. This work will identify the people through whom, and the places where, in-person and digital social networks most substantially influence adolescents’ alcohol consumption.
Links to studies: Built Environments
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A total of 275,345 people died and 803,393 were admitted to emergency departments due to interpersonal shooting events from 2010-2019, contributing a total of $110 billion in costs to police and criminal justice systems. This enormous burden is borne across the full geographic extent of the US. Public and private authorities invest heavily in preventive interventions to reduce gun crimes locally, but guns flow routinely around the country, undermining local prevention efforts. This proposal examines the sources of guns used in crimes and considers the way they are transported around the US to affect gun violence in local areas.
Links to studies: Built Environments, Gun Violence
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This F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award funds PhD student, Christina Mehranbod’s dissertation research. For this work, we propose to create a responsive buffer — a new measurement of individuals’ exposure to the alcohol environment that is responsive to documented individual-level and neighborhood-level characteristics — to advance studies on alcohol outlet density. A new measurement of the alcohol environment has critical implications for establishment of the relationship of alcohol outlet density and alcohol consumption, which will therefore directly inform environmental prevention efforts, like licensing and zoning, to reduce alcohol consumption and improve population health.
Links to studies: Built Environments, Retail Alcohol Outlets
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The PI for this project is PhD Student, Christina Mehranbod. In 2020, Armenia experienced the compounding impact of a devastating war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a continued high rate of premature death. Conflict, crises, and instability are often associated with the increased risk of unhealthy alcohol use. Low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) are disproportionately affected by the consequences of unhealthy alcohol use. The goal of this research is to identify opportunities for preventive intervention to reduce alcohol use and related harms in Armenia. This research project will 1) assess the distribution and density of alcohol outlets and alcohol advertisements in the neighborhoods of Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia; 2) explore youth adults’ perceptions, views, behavioral norms, and cultural contexts related to alcohol use and mental health; and 3) examine health care providers’ views of potential screening and intervention methods to address unhealthy alcohol use in young adults. This research has the potential to inform programming and policies to develop affordable interventions that reduce unhealthy alcohol use and improve mental health.
Links to studies: Global Health, Retail Alcohol Outlets