May 18 2012
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has granted $350,000 to a professor at the University of Miami (UM) School of Business Administration for an innovative study aimed at uncovering cocaine abuse patterns to lead to more effective treatments. Yongtao Guan, a professor of management science at the UM School of Business, will use statistical methods to interpret and categorize data of cocaine users, specifically their patterns of use before, during and following drug rehabilitation, in order to better understand the treatment's effectiveness. The proposed methods are not limited to cocaine addictions but also can be used for the treatment of other addictions including alcohol dependence.
"The result of this work can be used by other researchers and drug counselors to better evaluate the effectiveness of treatment and to determine the most effective treatment for addicts based on their individual, behavioral characteristics," said Guan, whose collaborators include Jose Szapocznik, a professor at UM's Miller School of Medicine, and Rajita Sinha and Heping Zhang, both professors at Yale University. "The results could have major economic implications in that there are more than one million people dependent on cocaine in the U.S. alone."
Source:
University of Miami School of Business Administration