Unlocking the mysteries of motivation: Dr. Daniel Wolf's groundbreaking research on psychosis and the brain

Renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist shares insights on his pioneering work and inspirational journey in exclusive "Genomic Press Interview"

Genomic Press

 

image: 

Daniel Wolf, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

view more 

Credit: Daniel Wolf, MD, PhD

PHILADELPHIA, PA - In a captivating Genomic Press Interview published in the peer-reviewed journal Brain Medicine (ISSN: 2997-2639, Genomic Press, New York), Dr. Daniel Wolf, a rising star in neuropsychiatry, shares his journey and groundbreaking research on motivation impairment in psychosis and schizophrenia.

The interview, featured in the Innovators & Ideas: Rising Star section, offers a unique glimpse into the life and career of this accomplished researcher and clinician. Dr. Wolf, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, discusses his path from a curious child fascinated by his father's medical mysteries to a leading expert in the neurobiology of motivation.

Dr. Wolf's research focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms behind amotivation and other symptom dimensions in psychosis and at-risk states. His work aims to develop novel assessment biomarkers for early-stage drug development, potentially revolutionizing treatment approaches for individuals with schizophrenia and related disorders.

"Motivation impairment is one of the most significant drivers of long-term disability in schizophrenia and many other neurological and psychiatric disorders," Dr. Wolf explains in the interview. "I hope that my research will help quantitatively parse heterogeneity in motivation impairment and link particular types or dimensions to specific brain circuits."

The Genomic Press Interview delves into Dr. Wolf's innovative use of functional neuroimaging to study brain motivation circuitry, particularly the role of the ventral striatum in negative symptoms of schizophrenia. His work has led to one of the most well-established findings in psychosis functional neuroimaging literature, observed across multiple paradigms and disorders.

Dr. Wolf's current research themes include:

1. Parsing motivation impairment into intrinsic vs. extrinsic, approach vs. avoidance, and social vs. nonsocial components
2. Developing behavioral and fMRI paradigms to capture domain-specific and domain-general aspects of motivation
3. Understanding the dual role of brain circuits in motivation impairment and positive symptoms like paranoia
4. Optimizing fMRI tasks for within-individual reliability in pharmacological challenge studies

The interview also touches on Dr. Wolf's personal life, sharing insights into his values, inspirations, and life philosophy. His dedication to truth-seeking in science and his balanced approach to work and family life offer inspiration to aspiring researchers and clinicians.

As Director of the Clinical Neurosciences Training Program and Co-Director of the Psychosis T32 at UPenn, Dr. Wolf continues to shape the next generation of neuropsychiatry researchers while providing care to individuals with psychosis.

This Genomic Press Interview provides a comprehensive look at a scientist whose work stands at the intersection of clinical psychiatry, neuroscience, and innovative research methodologies. It offers valuable insights for researchers, clinicians, and anyone interested in the future of psychiatric treatment and the human mind.

The full Genomic Press Interview “Daniel H. Wolf: Understanding motivation impairment from clinical, behavioral, and neurobiological perspectives to pave the way for better treatments” was published on 16 July 2024 and is freely available online in the Innovators & Ideas: Rising Star section of Brain Medicine (ISSN: 2997-2639): https://bm.genomicpress.com/aop/.

Brain Medicine is a peer-reviewed journal published by Genomic Press (New York).

---

Method of Research

News article

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Daniel H. Wolf: Understanding motivation impairment from clinical, behavioral, and neurobiological perspectives to pave the way for better treatments

 

Understanding food insecurity and its effects on gestational diabetes risk among American Indian and Alaska Native females can lead to better outcomes

A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior examines the critical role of food insecurity in shaping gestational diabetes risk and reduction among young American Indian and Alaska Native females and provides guidance for education 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Elsevier

 

audio: 

Sarah A. Stotz, PhD, RDN, CDCES, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Colorado State University, presents the results of a new study assessing the risk of gestational diabetes in Native adolescent and young adult females due to food insecurity. Reducing gestational diabetes through a culturally informed approach to care and health education is essential for fostering healthy eating habits.

view more 

Credit: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

Philadelphia, September 5, 2024 – Food insecurity, defined as the lack of consistent access to sufficient food for an active, healthy life, has been exacerbated in Tribal communities by systemic anti-indigenous racism, including policies that disrupt traditional food practices and access. A recent qualitative study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, explores the connection between food insecurity and gestational diabetes risk among young American Indian and Alaska Native females. The study highlights how targeted risk reduction methods could significantly improve diabetes health outcomes for this population, which is disproportionately impacted by health disparities.

Lead author Sarah Stotz, PhD, RDN, CDCES, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Colorado State University, explains, "For many Native communities, the lasting impacts of colonization, forced removal from traditional lands, boarding schools, and both past and present-day food commodity programs have influenced how Native peoples eat and why those dietary habits are passed down through generations.”

The research, conducted between September 2022 and February 2023, recruited experts in American Indian and Alaska Native food, nutrition, food systems, reproductive health, adolescent health, and women’s health to discuss the relationship(s) between food insecurity and gestational diabetes risk. Using a semistructured moderator guide, interviews and focus groups were recorded teleconference interviews or in-person focus groups (e.g., Zoom). The moderator guide was developed by five qualitative researchers with expertise in food systems, reproductive health, and Native communities, including three of whom are Native themselves.

Qualitative findings revealed three key themes: 1) diet and nutrition habits are formed through intergenerational food preferences and are driven by lasting implications of colonization; 2) young people are influenced by what their peers eat and the food environment, including outside of the home; and 3) the methods used to understand household food insecurity and nutrition habits in the randomized controlled trial (e.g., parent study) were likely limited.

Future interventions would benefit from employing strengths-based, culturally centered, trauma-informed, multilevel frameworks to better address healthy eating and dietary behaviors among Native youth, emphasizing the integration of peer-focused resources and family-centered strategies in programs for diabetes risk reduction. This community-centered approach should include culturally grounded and trauma-informed assessments of household food insecurity and foster collaborative partnerships between healthcare, food retail, and public health sectors. Such efforts will help create healthful environments and Native-centered resources, aiming to achieve holistic health for Native adolescent females and reduce disparities in diabetes.

Dr. Stotz states, “Within public health frameworks, it is important to address upstream factors and systems that shape downstream factors (e.g., individual behaviors). It is important to emphasize that many communities already know the strengths-based solutions that would improve holistic health for their people, and interventions and programming should center these community-generated ideas and solutions.

---

Journal

Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

DOI

10.1016/j.jneb.2024.06.004 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Relationship Between Food Insecurity and Healthy Eating Behavior for Gestational Diabetes Risk Reduction Among American Indian and Alaska Native Adolescent and Young Adult Females: A Qualitative Exploration

Article Publication Date

5-Sep-2024

 

Virtual learning detrimental to school attendance, especially in districts with higher poverty rates, study finds

University of Notre Dame

 

image: 

William Evans, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics and co-founder of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities.

view more 

Credit: Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame

BYLINE: Tracy DeStazio

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of chronic absenteeism have nearly doubled across the nation for students in kindergarten through grade 12.

This increase was tied to the mode of instruction during the early years of the pandemic. In particular, schools that employed virtual learning as the primary teaching mode during the 2020-21 school year experienced a greater increase in chronic absenteeism in the following year. That increase was significantly greater in school districts with higher levels of poverty, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

William Evans, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics and co-founder of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, co-authored the study with current undergraduate student Kathryn Muchnick and 2024 graduate Olivia Rosenlund. Their work was recently published in the scientific journal JAMA Network Open.

The study analyzed data for two years from more than 11,000 school districts across the United States and found that chronic absenteeism rates increased from 16 percent in 2018-19 to nearly 30 percent in the 2021-22 school year. Students whose schools had full virtual instruction during the pandemic had chronic absenteeism rates that were nearly 7 percentage points higher than those schools that were fully in person, according to the research.

A student is considered chronically absent if he or she misses at least 10 percent of the instructional days in any given school year. That equates to more than three weeks of absences during a 180-day academic year.

As reported in the study, chronic absenteeism has been shown to lead to lower test scores, reduced social and educational interactions, lower rates of high school graduation and increased substance use. The increase in chronic absenteeism began to occur as public schools in the U.S. were attempting to return to pre-pandemic modes of in-person teaching.

Previous studies have indicated that moving away from in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year to online teaching methods reduced student achievement and educational development, adversely affected children’s mental well-being and decreased school enrollment.

“We’ve learned a lot from the pandemic,” Evans said, “and a lot of work has gone into researching what effects virtual learning has had on students. It’s really difficult when you disrupt their educational experience by going remote.”

Both of Evans’ co-authors were high school students during the pandemic, giving them a uniquely personal perspective on the study’s results. Rosenlund said that when she entered the end of her senior year with fully virtual classes, she and her classmates “definitely had lower motivation to learn during that time compared to when class was fully in person.”

Muchnick added, “The shift in student motivation after online learning [back to in-person] was palpable.”

The research also indicated that chronic absenteeism rates hit at-risk students and school districts with the highest levels of poverty the hardest. Those school districts saw chronic absenteeism soar more than 10 percentage points higher among students who had participated in fully remote instruction, versus in-person learning.

“There is growing evidence that those in the most precarious situations were the ones that were really hurt the most by virtual instruction,” Evans said. “The districts with higher levels of poverty had higher rates of chronic absenteeism already, and they were much more aggressive at using virtual learning during COVID. So you took a vulnerable population, used this method of delivery for educational instruction, and the outcomes for these children are substantially worse.”

Households with lower incomes or fewer resources were less likely to have reliable or high-speed internet service and had far less access to quality computers or technology, making for a less-than-ideal virtual learning environment. “It was pretty detrimental for those kids who were most at risk in the first place,” Evans added, “and now they’ve been pushed further behind as a result of these policies.”

Although the study did not specifically explore the reasons behind the drop in school attendance, it did offer several possible explanations. First, roughly 10 to 20 percent of students were experiencing post-COVID-19 symptoms and may have elected not to go to school for medical and health reasons. Second, there was a corresponding increase in teacher absences and substitute teacher shortages that made students less compelled to go to school. Third, a greater occurrence of mental health issues, which is often coupled with an increased preoccupation with social media, may have kept students at home. Finally, following the pandemic, parents appear to be more willing to allow their children to miss school for a variety of reasons.

With the worst of the pandemic behind us, many parents, school teachers and administrators believe that virtual instruction is here to stay and will continue as a major component of K-12 education, potentially being used as a substitute for in-person teaching under certain circumstances, such as snow days.

“It’s going to be really difficult to put the genie back in the bottle in this context,” Evans said.

Finding a balance of how to use virtual learning in a way that does not negatively impact the students’ overall educational experience will be crucial, according to the researchers.

Rosenlund added, “It’s disheartening that students are still suffering from the negative effects of online learning. I hope that we can consider its implications more carefully going forward.”

The researchers suggest that educators and policymakers examine the evidence when establishing policies and practices related to online learning, particularly for those communities supporting at-risk students, in order to achieve equitable outcomes for all students.

“I think we need to take a more holistic approach in thinking about how to deal with these pandemics in the future,” Evans said.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

---

Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.29569 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Virtual Learning in Kindergarten Through Grade 12 During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Chronic Absenteeism

 

Funding awarded for research on bagworms, bubonic plague, ancient mammals and a repository of changing seasons

Florida Museum of Natural History

Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History and collaborating institutions have been collectively awarded $2,090,402 in funding from the National Science Foundation this month. Awards were distributed to faculty members in archaeology, vertebrate paleontology, Lepidoptera, biodiversity informatics and artificial intelligence.

Bagmoths complete their life cycle in the strangest way possible

There are often stark physical differences between the sexes of a given species. Male and female eclectus parrots have such astonishingly different plumage that they were considered different species for over thirty years. Female cone bushes have thicker leaves and branches than males and use them to supply extra energy and water to their fruit, which remain on the plant until they are removed by wildfires. And there’s as much as an 83-fold difference in size between female blanket octopi, known to be up to 6 feet in length, and males, which grow to the size of bottlecaps.

But few organisms take sexual dimorphism to the extremes found in bagworms. Florida Museum curator of Lepidoptera, Akito Kawahara, and curator of education, Megan Ennes, received funding to study and teach the natural history of this strange group of moths.

Bagworms get their name from the silk houses constructed by their larvae, to which they attach various sticks, leaves and other organic detritus. Male larvae undergo the normal metamorphosis into adult moths, but the females of many species only partially transform. Some are born without wings, while others lack wings, antennae, legs and mouths.

Working with colleagues, Kawahara and Ennes will trace the evolutionary history of bagworms. This will include determining how species in this group are related, the molecular cause of arrested development in females and which changes in DNA structure led to this extreme form of sexual dimorphism. The grant will also fund several education initiatives, including a multiyear exhibit, a digital comic strip and an illustrated book for children.

How did ancient mammals fare during rapid climate change?

Roughly 56 million years ago, temperatures abruptly rose by as much as 8 degrees Celsius, vastly altering ecosystems on Earth’s continents and oceans.  

Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum, and Arthur Porto, curator of artificial intelligence for natural history and biodiversity, were awarded funding to study how mammal communities responded to this period of sudden and intense global warming, called the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum.

Research crews from the Florida Museum have collected more than 20,000 vertebrate fossils from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming that were preserved immediately before, during and after this interval of warming.

Bloch, Porto and their colleagues will develop and use new artificial intelligence software to analyze these fossils and search for hidden patterns. They’ll use these data to determine how functional diversity — which measures the range of ways organisms use resources in their environment — was altered in mammal communities during the warming event. Paleontology studies of this scope are rare, and results will have significant implications for the ways in which plants and animals respond to modern climate change.

What the black death can tell us about how outbreaks spread

Disease outbreaks are strongly influenced by the landscape in which they take place. This includes everything from climatic and land use patterns to population density and migration rates.

To make things even more complicated, all of these factors are simultaneously influencing each other. Changes in climate, for example, often lead to food shortages and wars, making people more susceptible to diseases and more likely to transmit them over long distances. This complexity has made it difficult for scientists and historians to determine how diseases have spread in the past and to predict the ways in which future outbreaks will unfold.

But new advancements in artificial intelligence are making it easier to collect and analyze this data. Nicolas Gauthier, curator of artificial intelligence at the Florida Museum, has received funding to digitally re-create the 14th century outbreak of bubonic plague thousands of times.

Gauthier and his colleagues will do this by combining archaeological, historical and paleoenvironmental data and analyzing the similarities and differences among the virtual outbreaks. They will also include subsequent bubonic plagues, such as the Great Plague of London in 1665 and 1666 and an outbreak that spread across most of Europe and Asia in the 19th century. Gabriela Hamerlinck, a professor in the University of Florida’s geography department, will use the discoveries made during the project and others like it to create dynamic content that engages student.

The information gained during the project will then be used to create a predictive model for future outbreaks of any disease, both to increase preparedness and reduce casualties. 

Tracking the effects of climate change on biodiversity? There’s an app for that

Over the last century, prudent individuals have created perpetual data repositories that document the ways in which ecosystems are changing along with climate. Using this global equivalent of a stethoscope, scientists can predict how plants and animals will respond to future changes as well. But to accurately take the planet’s pulse, everyone has to pitch in.

The USA National Phenology Network was created in 2007 and contains more than 35 million records collected by thousands of people in the United States. It includes observations on when plants produce leaves and flowers, when animals become active in spring and dormant in autumn, and how the distributions of both plants and animals are being altered by climate change.

But there’s a problem. Citizen scientist platforms like iNaturalist don't require much work on the part of participants, but the National Phenology Network has rigorous data standards that can make it difficult to upload observations. In practice, this means only people with an abundance of time and resources to spare are able to contribute, resulting in fewer records and spotty coverage.

Robert Guralnick, the Florida Museum’s curator of bioinformatics, hopes to change that. With funding from NSF, he and his colleagues plan to completely redesign the network’s smartphone app, called Nature’s Notebook, to make it easier and more intuitive to use. Changes will allow users to level up and earn badges while learning how to collect data. The revised app will also have integrated connections to social media platforms and a direct pipeline to iNaturalist, allowing users to share observations, get help with identifying organisms and interact with other users.

 

Guardians of the reef: How parrotfish promote coral health

University of Colorado at Boulder

 

image: 

A male parrotfish chases another parrotfish. 

view more 

Credit: Joshua Manning/CU Boulder

Neighbors can be annoying. They may be loud or intrude on your space. But is it worth fighting with them? Parrotfish choose not to. 

In a new study published August 28 in the journal Ecology, a CU Boulder researcher and his collaborator revealed that the spotlight parrotfish, a brightly colored species found in the shallow waters off Florida and in the Caribbean Sea, behave more tolerantly toward neighboring parrotfish but aggressively toward strangers.
 
The researchers spent days underwater observing the colorful fish, providing key insight into a species that plays a critical role in both maintaining healthy coral reefs and contributing to the white sand beaches of the Caribbean.

“Parrotfish are an important part of the coral reef ecosystem and the ecological functions it provides,” said Joshua Manning, the paper’s first author and a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Understanding their behavior will help us evaluate whether and how they can buffer the effects of climate change on coral reefs.”
 
The spotlight parrotfish is one of the largest parrotfish species in the Caribbean reefs, measuring about 1.5 feet long. They have strong, beak-like teeth that allow them to spend up to 90% of the day munching on microscopic organisms that grow on and within the calcium carbonate structures created by corals. As the fish remove coral skeletons, they create space for new corals to grow and produce white sand as their digestive waste. 
 
As highly territorial animals, male spotlight parrotfish defend territories as big as two tennis courts, where they forage and mate with a small group of female followers. But not every parrotfish has a territory. Some “floaters,” as Manning calls them, constantly scout the reefs, ready to claim space that becomes available. 
 
As a seasoned diver, Manning spent more than 400 hours underwater during his Ph.D. studies trying to understand how the spotlight parrotfish behave and interact with each other.  He noticed the fish might be smarter than what many people thought. 
 
He followed 10 spotlight parrotfish off the coast of Bonaire, a Caribbean island. He noticed that every time a floater swam by an occupied territory, the territory holders would puff up, display their fins and aggressively chase the floater away. 
 
But when parrotfish from neighboring territories swam close to the boundary lines, territory holders were much less aggressive. When parrotfish did behave aggressively toward their neighbors, it was most often because they had strayed too far into another parrotfish’s territory while chasing another parrotfish, resulting in retaliation.
 
Scientists have observed this “dear enemy” effect—when territory holders exhibit less aggression toward neighbors than strangers—in squirrels, sparrows, frogs and other animals. Manning and his collaborator, Sophie McCoy, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, described the phenomenon for the first time in parrotfish. 
 
Manning said that parrotfish might be more aggressive toward floaters because they are more likely to try to oust territory holders and take over their territories. While territory-holding males have better mating opportunities, their constant patrolling and defense efforts take a toll on their body condition. As a result, they must focus their energy on fighting off the most significant threats.  
 
To the team’s surprise, floaters seemed to recognize territorial boundaries. Manning noticed that floaters often swam across the reefs using the buffer zones between established territories to avoid aggression.
 
“These fish may be smarter than what we give them credit for. They seem to recognize neighbors, find the boundaries of territories, and have the capacity to learn and use information,” Manning said. 
 
Due to climate change, coral reefs are declining rapidly. Between 2023 and mid-May 2024, scientists have confirmed mass coral bleaching in at least 62 countries and territories worldwide. Coral bleaching happens when corals expel the algae living in their tissues under stressful conditions, such as high ocean temperatures, causing them to turn completely white.
 
Parrotfish depend on coral reefs for food and shelter. Losses in corals—due to ocean acidification and warming—can have significant impacts on their habitat and populations. At the same time, parrotfish can accelerate reef recovery from bleaching events by creating bare space for new coral larvae to settle and grow.
 
“Reefs are a vital source of food for us and support immense biodiversity, including species with significant medical potential. By studying how parrotfishes use space and how their grazing influences coral recruitment patterns, we can better understand how reefs can recover from disturbances and adapt to climate change," Manning said.
 

---

Journal

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.4407 

 

For many animals sleep is a social activity, but it’s usually studied as an individual process

Cell Press

Group sleeping can impact when animals sleep, how long they sleep for, and how deeply they sleep. For example, groups of meerkats time their sleep according to “sleep traditions”; olive baboons sleep less when their group size increases; bumblebees suppress sleep in the presence of offspring; and co-sleeping mice can experience synchronized REM sleep. To fully understand both sleep and animal social structures, we need to pay more attention to the “social side” of sleep, animal behaviorists argue in an opinion paper publishing September 5 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.  

Although many animals sleep in groups, most sleep studies are conducted under laboratory conditions that only consider one animal at a time. These laboratory sleep studies provide high-resolution information on sleep depth and phase, but they are unable to capture the environmental or social contexts in which sleep usually occurs. To understand the interconnections between sleeping and sociality, the researchers say that we need to study groups of sleeping animals in the wild.

“Social sleep is a research frontier that we believe holds exciting potential for new insights into both sleep science and wild animals’ lives,” write the researchers, who include behavioral ecologists Pritish Chakravarty (@prit_chak) and Margaret Crofoot (@MegCrofoot) of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz Germany. “We propose a new framework that leverages simultaneous monitoring of the sleep of members of social groups, combined with time-series and social network analyses, to investigate how the social environment shapes (and is shaped by) sleep.”

To study sleep in the wild, the researchers recommend leveraging technologies such as wearable or implantable accelerometers, which provide information on animal movements with video or direct observations of the animals’ behavior. Pairing this sleep data with measurements of the group’s social networks like dominance hierarchies and kinship relationships, for example, could provide important ecological and evolutionary insights into the impact of sleep on the fitness and survival of both individual and groups of animals, the researchers say.

“It is likely that key aspects of group behavior, including coordination, decision-making, and cooperative potential, will be influenced by the sleep of its members,” they write. “By collecting data on sleep and sociality and applying our proposed tools to analyze social sleep, we can begin unraveling the adaptive functions and evolutionary trade-offs of sleep that may not be revealed by studying individual animals alone.”

###

This research was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Packard Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the European Union, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Chakravarty et al., “The sociality of sleep in animal groups” https://cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(24)00176-9

Trends in Ecology & Evolution (@Trends_Ecol_Evo), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that contains polished, concise, and readable reviews and opinion pieces in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science. It aims to keep scientists informed of new developments and ideas across the full range of ecology and evolutionary biology—from the pure to the applied, and from molecular to global. Visit http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

---

Journal

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1016/j.tree.2024.07.011 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The sociality of sleep in animal groups

Article Publication Date

5-Sep-2024

 

Study shows fentanyl’s role in Oregon overdose spike after policy decriminalizing drug possession

A study by public health researchers at Brown University found that decriminalization of drug possession was not associated with an increase in fatal drug overdose rates in Oregon.

Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When overdose rates spiked in Oregon in 2021 after the state decriminalized low-level drug possession, blame quickly turned to the new state law. But a new study by researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health implicates another factor: the introduction of fentanyl into Oregon’s unregulated drug market.

“What's compelling about this analysis is that it follows the path of fentanyl across the country and offers testament to the destruction wreaked by this highly potent drug,” said study author Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine (research) and health services, policy and practice (research) at Brown. “When fentanyl arrives in Oregon in early 2021, we can see from the data that it wreaks destruction there, too. That was also when decriminalization was taking effect in Oregon.”

With the implementation of Measure 110 in 2021, Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize small amounts of any drug for personal use. In April 2024, in reaction to the state’s skyrocketing overdose rate and other concerns, Oregon’s governor signed into law a bill that rolled back Measure 110 by making “personal use possession” a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

Del Pozo said that there hasn’t been an analysis of the association of Measure 110 with overdose mortality that has fully accounted for the introduction of fentanyl to Oregon’s unregulated drug market, despite the fact that fentanyl is known to be the prime driver of fatal overdose in the U.S.

In the paper, published in JAMA Network Open, del Pozo and his team evaluated the association between changes in state fatal drug overdose rates and the escalation of fentanyl availability across the country from 2008 to 2022.

Comparing Oregon to 48 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., that did not decriminalize drug use, they analyzed national data from state drug laboratories showing what kinds of illicit drugs were being recovered and tested. They focused on the percentage of the drug supply accounted for by fentanyl and its analogs, which increased state by state over time. The researchers then plotted this data against publicly available information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control of each state’s fatal drug overdoses.

They found that across all states, an increase of fentanyl in the illicit drug supply was strongly correlated with an increase in drug overdose fatalities.

“It was a very tight relationship: the more fentanyl that was recovered and tested by the state, the higher the fatal overdose rate in that state,” del Pozo said.

The researchers determined the inflection point when each state experienced a rapid escalation of fentanyl in its unregulated drug market, making it the dominant illicit opioid in that state. For Oregon, that change took place in the first half of 2021. M110 took effect in February 2021.

“It was very unfortunate timing, because it means the effects of decriminalization were confounded by an event — fentanyl supply shock — that dramatically drives up fatal overdose, state by state, as it occurs,” del Pozo said.

The researchers used the data to construct a model that determined the decriminalization of drug possession in Oregon was not associated with an increase in fatal drug overdose rates in the two years after its enactment. They concluded that when evaluating the effect of public policies on overdose mortality, it is critical to account for the role of fentanyl as the principal driver of the nation’s overdose mortality epidemic.

“If we’re not modeling fentanyl’s effects on a community when we’re talking about strategies to address the overdose crisis, then we’re not following the evidence,” del Pozo said.

The change in Oregon’s drug policies that reversed Measure 110 and recriminalized drug possession took place on Sept. 1, 2024.

The study reported in this press release was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, with additional support from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, under award numbers K01DA056654 and P20GM125507. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

---

Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.31612 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Drug decriminalization, fentanyl, and fatal overdoses in Oregon

Article Publication Date

5-Sep-2024

COI Statement

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; 371 collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or 372 approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

 

State-by-state data boosts bird conservation planning

Cornell University

ITHACA, N.Y. – New data summaries from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird platform will help state wildlife planners assess the status of bird populations that live in or pass through their state – a crucial tool in protecting species.

A team of data scientists at eBird, the participatory science platform, has packaged summaries covering every bird species, in every state, and made them available online for free. These data summaries will help states prepare their federally required 2025 updates to State Wildlife Action Plans.

“As we began to work more closely with state agencies and regional conservation partnerships, we realized that we needed to significantly increase the accessibility of eBird information for these partners,” said Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, assistant director of the Cornell Lab’s Center for Avian Population Studies and the driving force behind development of the state summaries.

“By providing these customized summaries, state agencies don’t have to wrangle with big data and spatial tools. They get data targeted to the area they are responsible for,” said Andrew Stillman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab. “It’s much more efficient, saving them time and money.”

State Wildlife Action Plans are critical to conservation in the United States, Stillman said. The plans must be updated every 10 years and submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for approval. Approval releases funding from the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program, which is used to proactively conserve birds and other species that make up the biodiversity of each state.

The 2025 updates will mark the second major revision to state wildlife plans since the first plans were completed in 2005. But this is the first time eBird state data summaries will be available to inform the revisions, helping planners easily identify which species are in greatest need of conservation and to set priorities for where and when to take conservation action.

Without year-round weekly bird abundance data from eBird, an important part of the big picture is missing. For example, tundra swans don’t breed in Michigan and are not found there for most of the year. But during two weeks in March, 13% of the global population is migrating through Michigan, making marsh and wetland habitat vital for stopovers during their long journey back to their Arctic breeding grounds.

The state summaries are updated each year with new population numbers from eBird. With the latest August 2024 update, planners can now also see which way bird populations are trending for the entire state: increasing, decreasing or stable; and by how much.

“We’ll continue to refine and update the summaries so states have what they need,” Stillman said. “We’re also looking into expanding this customization for the two dozen Migratory Bird Joint Ventures in the U.S. and Canada. Birds are not known for recognizing human boundaries and joint venture partnerships work across boundaries to conserve birds and the habitats they need, where they need it. The state planners tell us, ‘Keep it coming.’” 

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

-30-