Program Overview and Goals

The PROTEA team engages in a variety of research efforts at UW and beyond with collaborations around the country. The overarching goals for our research program comprise the enhancement of treatment and prevention for substance use disorders, substance misuse, and related conditions. As such, we engage in a program of research that spans efforts from clinical efficacy trials through translational investigations in health services research and implementation science.

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Please email protea.research@mailplus.wisc.edu for any questions related to clinical trial eligibility and enrollment.

Psychedelic and MDMA Studies

Funding Source: Heffter Research Institute

Principal Investigator: Randall Brown

Description: Conduct a single arm feasibility study of 2 guided psilocybin sessions in addition to opioid agonist therapy (OAT) with buprenorphine/naloxone in a sample of 10 adult subjects with OUDs.

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Source: Revive Therapeutics

Principle Investigator: Christopher Nicholas

Description: Conduct a single arm feasibility study of two guided psilocybin sessions and pre-post dose functional neuroimaging in a sample of 12 adults with methamphetamine use disorder recruited from local HIV community care clinics.

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Source: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

Site Investigators: Christopher Nicholas, Randall Brown

Description: This multi-site study assesses the efficacy and safety of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted psychotherapy in participants who were enrolled in a parent study for treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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Funding Source: The Tiny Blue Dot Foundation

Principal Investigator: Charles Raison, Christopher Nicholas Sub-I

Description: This pilot study aims to 1) establish a dosing regimen for intravenous (IV) psilocybin that will allow the drug to be administered to asleep participants without awakening them; and 2) assess whether this dosing regimen produces a psychedelic experience.

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Funding Source: Gift from Mike and Sue Shannon

Principal Investigator: Christopher Nicholas, Chuck Raison (co-I)

Description: The primary objective of the RECAP Study Program is to investigate the role played by conscious experience in the therapeutic effects of psilocybin by investigating the amnestic effects of combined psilocybin and repeated boluses of midazolam.

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Funding Source: DFMCH Small Grant

Principal Investigator: Christopher Nicholas,

Description: The objectives of this study are to (1) identify cortical functional connectivity associated with a multi-sensory predictive coding task and (2) identify differential changes in cognitive flexibility and functional connectivity during predictive processing.

Funding Source: DFMCH Small Grant

Principal Investigator: Amelia Baltes, David Horton Co-I

Description: The project utilizes qualitative interviewing to elucidate the similarities and differences between therapist and participant perceptions of psilocybin- and MDMA-assisted therapy to inform therapeutic process and outcome research, PAT treatment development, and future clinical trial design.

Community-Engaged and Health Services Research

Funding Source: NIH-NIDA

Principal Investigator: Majid Afshar (Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine); Randall Brown Co-I

Description: Documentation of substance use is common and occurs in 97% of provider admission notes, but their free text format renders them difficult to mine and analyze. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning are subfields of artificial intelligence (AI) that provide a solution to analyze text data in the EHR to identify substance misuse. Version of an NLP and machine learning tool, our opioid and alcohol misuse classifiers successfully used data from clinical notes collected in the first 24 hours of admission. We aim to train and test our substance misuse classifiers in a retrospective dataset of over 35,000 hospitalizations that have been manually screened with the universal screen, AUDIT, and DAST. The top performing classifier will then be tested prospectively to: (1) externally validate its screening performance in a hospital without established screening; and (2) test its effectiveness against usual care at a hospital with questionnaire-based substance misuse screening.

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Funding Source: NIH-NIDA

Principal Investigator: Ryan Westergaard (Medicine); Randall Brown Co-I

Description: The project proposes a multi-phase, mixed-methods study that aims to implement and evaluate a novel community response model, which we have named the Community-Based, Client-Centered Prevention Home. Using the organizational infrastructure of a large, multi-site syringe service program serving a geographically dispersed population of people who inject drugs in rural communities across Northern Wisconsin, we will build locally responsive systems to facilitate uptake of evidence-based prevention services for high-risk clients.

Funding Source: NIH-NIDA

Principal Investigator: John Curtain (Psychology); Randall Brown Co-I

Description: The broad goals of this project are to develop and deliver a highly contextualized, lapse risk prediction models for forecasting day-by-day probability of opioid and other drug use lapse among people pursuing drug abstinence. This lapse risk prediction model will be delivered within the Addiction-Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (A-CHESS) mobile app, which has been established by RCT as a state-of-the-art mHealth system for providing continuing care services for alcohol and substance use disorders.

Funding Source: NIH-NIDA

Principal Investigator: Andrew Quanbeck (DFMCH); Randall Brown Co-I

Description: The research aims to identify which sequence and combination of implementation strategies works most effectively in promoting practice change in different primary care clinics. The research serves the long-term goal of learning how to optimize implementation strategies to promote evidence-based practice in primary care settings.

Funding Source: DFMCH Small Grant

Principal Investigator: David Horton, Randall Brown Co-I

Description: The project is investigating rates of interrupting medications for opioid use disorder in the context of post-surgical pain management. The research is mixed methods, combining data collected from Electronic Medical Records, survey, and qualitative interview data to inform current practices and surgeon decision-making surrounding pain management in individuals medicated for OUD.

Funding Source: NIH-NIDA

Principal Investigator: Andrew Quanbeck (DFMCH); Randall Brown Co-I

Description: The research aims to identify which sequence and combination of implementation strategies works most effectively in promoting practice change in different primary care clinics. The research serves the long-term goal of learning how to optimize implementation strategies to promote evidence-based practice in primary care settings.

Funding Source: NIH-NIDA 4R01DA030431-05

Principal Investigator: Todd Molfenter (Industrial & Systems Engineering); Randall Brown Co-I

Description: This trial will study the impact of Ohio counties (payers) and addiction treatment organizations working in partnership to remove systemic barriers to adoption of the evidence-based practice (EBP) buprenorphine, a medication for opioid dependence. While various implementation strategies have targeted clinicians and/or treatment provider organizations, we believe this to be among the first controlled studies to systematically study the impact payer and provider strategies have on the implementation and dissemination of an EBP.

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General Information

PROTEA Team
Megan Ringo
Program Manager
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Program Office

PROTEA
UW Dept. of Family Medicine
610 N Whitney Way, STE 200
Madison, WI 53705-2700