About the speaker:

Dr. Lindsay Squeglia is a Professor and licensed clinical psychologist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She is the co-Director of the MUSC Youth Collaborative, and her National Institutes of Health-supported research focuses on: (1) understanding the effects of alcohol and cannabis use on brain development and (2) using neuroscience to improve prevention and treatment of adolescent substance use disorders. She co-leads MUSC's site for the nationwide Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) and has served in various roles on the ABCD Steering Committee, Novel Technology Workgroup, and Community Engagement and Dissemination Workgroup. She has a strong interest in community outreach and education efforts and leads the MUSC High School Teen Science Ambassador Program, providing high school students with a three-phase internship experience in academic clinical research. In 2023, she completed her Fulbright Senior Scholar fellowship at the University of Sydney, establishing a cross-national collaboration between the United States and Australia to improve health outcomes globally for youth struggling with substance use and mental health issues.

About the talk:

Alcohol, cannabis, and vape products are the most commonly used substances during adolescence. Early interventions, including prevention and treatment, can reduce the risk of developing lifelong substance use disorders (SUDs). This presentation will be organized into two complementary parts. First, it will cover advances in adolescent SUD treatment. Although evidence based psychosocial interventions (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy, family-based therapy, motivational enhancement therapy) remain the foundation of SUD treatment, their effects are often modest and most youth return to using substances after treatment. This presentation will review the growing pipeline of neuroscience informed medications that may serve as a promising adjunct to psychosocial treatment for adolescent and young adult SUDs. Second, the presentation will review existing SUD prevention programming and cover recent efforts to develop a school-based universal neuroscience-informed prevention program to reduce youth SUDs, as well as opioid-related deaths. Developmentally sensitive, evidence based strategies can help improve outcomes for youth with SUDs.

This presentation is relevant to clinicians, psychology or psychiatry trainees, developmental cognitive neuroscientists, and graduate students at an intermediate level. The speaker has reported no conflicts of interest or commercial support for this talk.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe current trends in adolescent alcohol, cannabis, and vaping.
• Identify emerging, neuroscience‑informed pharmacologic approaches for adolescent and young adult substance use disorders and explain how these medications may augment psychosocial treatment in developmentally appropriate ways.
• Explain how neuroscience‑informed prevention strategies can improve substance use outcomes for youth