Lisa Fortuna, MD, MPH

Lisa R. Fortuna, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Child and Adolescent Multicultural Health Research at the UMass Chan Medical School. Her research interests include Latino mental health services research, immigrant mental health, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, substance abuse and dual diagnoses in adolescence. Dr. Fortuna has a five-year K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Dr. Fortuna's long-term career goal is to be an independent researcher with skills in the translation of empirically supported treatments into community settings, particularly for minority adolescents with co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders. The K23 grant focuses on the development of a CBT based treatment for substance abuse in the context of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in violence exposed minority and non-minority youth. She plans to follow this study with an application for a larger randomized controlled trial (R01) of the CBT for co-occurring disorders in adolescents. In the course of working on her therapy development study, she has further developed an interest in understanding the role of impulsivity, environmental triggers, and trauma on adolescent drug use. She recently has submitted an R21 application on The Influence of Religiosity and Spirituality on Alcohol Use among Ethnic and Racially Diverse Youth. The primary objective of this R21 proposal is to test diverse dimensions of religiosity and spirituality in childhood and early adulthood as potential diverters of early onset alcohol use and in the prevention of alcohol use disorders. The proposed study uses an eco-developmental approach in testing these religious/spiritual dimensions as potential negative correlates of alcohol use disorders and early age of alcohol use (before age 15 years of age) along with other dimensions of social support, family life, psychological coping, cultural affiliation and environmental stressors in a racially and culturally diverse nationally representative sample of young adults.