Jessica Powers, a clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate, received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for her NIH F31 Predoctoral NRSA Grant Application. Powers’ research focuses on the intersection of substance abuse and chronic pain conditions. She will be specifically researching pain as a predictor of cigarette or e-cigarette use, utilizing data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study.

Powers has been studying substance use and addiction, particularly the use of tobacco and nicotine products, on pain for almost a decade. She formerly served as a clinical research coordinator in addiction medicine before joining Syracuse University’s Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program in 2017. Powers currently works as a researcher in the Behavioral Medicine Research Group/ Pain and Addiction Research (PAR) Lab at Syracuse University, whose research focuses on pain and substance use (e.g., alcohol, opioids, nicotine/tobacco).

Over the next year, Powers will “conduct the first longitudinal study of pain and use/co-use of e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes.” The goal of this research is to “assess whether smokers with co-occurring pain (vs. no/low pain) are more likely to initiate co-use of e-cigarettes.” Powers hopes to use her research to better inform the treatment of substance use, especially for individuals with chronic pain conditions and hopes to use the findings of her research to inform development of integrated interventions for people with chronic pain.

More information about Powers’ research can be found on Syracuse University News.