Growing up in Brooklyn, Jessica Desalu began to notice trends of drug and alcohol use in her community and wanted to do something about it.

“During my upbringing, I saw that alcohol use, in addition to other drugs, was detrimental to my community,” Desalu said. “And I really wanted to understand, ultimately, how could I help, how could I bring impact and create optimal health amongst the black community?”

Desalu, a first-year graduate student in clinical psychology, and Aesoon Park, an assistant professor of psychology, have been conducting research on the factors that affect alcohol use among African American college students. Desalu began to work on the project in August with Park, who started research in the spring of 2013.

Through their research, Park and Desalu not only studied college populations, but also attempted to understand some of the risk factors that may possibly contribute to alcohol use amongst the African American population.

Desalu said that contrary to popular belief, African Americans don’t consume as much alcohol in comparison to majority groups, but they do experience more alcohol-related problems. She added that they hope to publish their work soon and that it will lead to creating intervention and prevention programs for this specific demographic.

“This is a high risk group, of course, considering the frequency of alcohol use on a college campus in addition to this group being a minority,” Desalu said. “We really hope that we’re going to be able to not only inform additional research but also just inform a more practical aspect for it.”

Desalu and Park used listservs, fliers and advertisements to encourage students to participate. Students would come in and take two surveys and then give a saliva sample. The whole process took 90 minutes.

During her undergraduate years, Desalu studied psychology and interned at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This internship is what sparked her interest in drug and alcohol abuse research and lead her to come to SU to work with Park, Desalu said.

Their findings have been congruent with what past researchers and scholars have found, Desalu said. They are seeing that there are certain factors that contribute to negative drinking consequences in African American college students, but some of those factors don’t contribute to the alcohol use itself.

In an April 15 SU News press release, Park said this study is different than others because it focuses on this certain demographic.

“Most alcohol studies have been done with whites, so we don’t have a lot of data to work with for black people,” Park said.

Desalu added that the goal was to create optimal health within the African American community.

“There is an absence of research that is done specifically on the black community as a whole,” Desalu said. “We’re not doing a comparison study, blacks versus the majority or blacks versus another minority. We’re focusing specifically on the black population so that we can understand some of the unique factors that contribute to their alcohol use, and their drinking consequences as well.”

Published on April 23, 2014 at 2:21 am

Contact Emma: ekbaty@syr.edu