A contextual-genetics approach to adolescent drug use and sexual risk behavior

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe a research program that began in 2005 that was designed to refine etiologic models of drug use and sexual risk behavior, as well as the prevention programs the models inform. We were motivated to start this research because inclusive reviews of programs designed to prevent drug use/abuse and sexual risk behavior reveal mixed results. Many prevention programs do not attain their goals, and others are effective for some subgroups but not others (Foxcroft 2006; Foxcroft et al. 2003; Kraemer et al. 2002; White and Pitts 1998), suggesting that the causes of these risk behaviors are not yet well enough understood for prevention efforts to achieve large and reliable effects. This suggested to us a need for new approaches to etiologic models of drug use/abuse and sexual risk behavior, particularly greater articulation of the ways in which interactions among genetic, psychosocial, and developmental processes can inform them. Concurrent advances in both knowledge and technology related to basic genetics and epigenetic processes have created unprecedented opportunities for conceptual integration. We responded to this challenge and this opportunity by initiating a research program that uses findings from gene-environment interplay, developmental, and epigenetic research conducted with rural African Americans and participants in the Iowa Adoption Studies (IAS) to refine etiologic models in ways that increase their predictive utility.