Editor Spotlight

Katie Witkiewitz, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

I am a clinical scientist with 20 years of experience in treating individuals with substance use disorder and developing and evaluating new treatments for substance use disorder. I am deeply committed to harm reduction approaches to targeting alcohol and other drug use behavior, reducing the stigma associated with alcohol and other drug use, and improving access to treatment and the quality of treatment for substance use disorder.

My clinical work and research has focused on prevention, treatment, and dissemination/implementation, specializing in mindfulness-based treatment of alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder, and polysubstance use. Most recently my research has focused on pain and substance use comorbidity, redefining recovery using a public health model, and precision medicine approaches to target alcohol use disorder.

I have served on the editorial board of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (PAB) for over a decade, serving as a consulting editor from 2006 to 2013 and associate editor from 2014 to 2019. I have also served on the editorial boards of five additional addiction journals: Journal of Addiction Medicine, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Substance Use and Misuse, and Alcohol and Alcoholism. I also chaired the Addiction Risks and Mechanisms NIH Study Section, which gave me a 10,000-foot view of the field that informs my vision for the future of PAB.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?

I aim to increase the impact of PAB (and thus readership and number of submissions) by improving article quality through guidance on acceptable reporting practices and statistical methods, as well as encouraging preregistration of all empirical papers. We are also encouraging individuals to submit preregistered systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

I aim to increase representation of policy-related papers and papers that may enhance dissemination and implementation of prevention and treatment programs into real-world settings. We are also prioritizing manuscript submissions that address the sociocultural context of addictive behaviors, as well as issues of health and research equity in the study of addiction and addictive behaviors. We are particularly interested in improving the dissemination of science that examines social factors in addictive behaviors and racial/ethnic and sexual/gender health inequities in addiction etiology, epidemiology, treatment, prevention, and policy.

I also plan to work with authors to add relevant supplementary materials and encourage open access to expand the reach of the journal. I would like PAB to become the premier journal for translational studies that bridge neuroscience with addiction psychology and for the reporting of technology-based interventions for addictive behaviors.

Finally, I plan to increase the social media presence of PAB via article alerts on social media and leveraging the large social media presence of the Society of Addiction Psychology in promoting PAB.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?

PAB has a unique place in this crowded field as the only journal that focuses primarily on psychosocial factors associated with the full range of addiction behaviors, including behavioral addictions (e.g., gambling, internet gaming disorder). As the journal of the Society of Addiction Psychology (APA Division 50), PAB is the premier journal for addiction psychology and is uniquely situated to promote the science of addiction psychology.

PAB covers topics from basic etiological studies examining markers of propensity for addictive behaviors, to human laboratory research on the effects of psychoactive substances, to epidemiological studies on the prevalence and correlates of addictive behaviors, to prevention and treatment of addictive behaviors, to policy. PAB is both narrowly focused on addictive behaviors and broadly focused on different types of research and methodological approaches, populations of interest, and types of addictive behaviors.

There are so many hot issues in addictive behaviors right now. NIH is spending millions of dollars on research addressing the opioid epidemic, called the Helping to End Addictions Long-term Initiative. I would love to see articles that focus on biopsychosocial factors contributing to opioid use and opioid use disorder, including the cross-section of chronic pain and addictive behaviors.

The legalization of cannabis for recreational use in numerous states is also a major issue that will be a focus of PAB. I am particularly interested in papers that examine effects of legalization on prevention, treatment, and policy related to cannabis use, cannabis-related harms, and cannabis use disorder.

The increase in alcohol use and alcohol-related morbidity and mortality in women and older adults is also an increasing concern, and I hope to receive papers focusing on alcohol use among these populations.

Finally, there are staggering health inequities among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in addiction prevention, treatment, and policy, and a great deal of work needs to be done to recognize and dismantle the systems that have led to inequities, as well as to promote re-imagined systems that reduce inequities.

We are currently prioritizing papers at the journal that focus on the sociocultural context of addictive behaviors and that examine racial/ethnic and gender/sex inequities in prevention, treatment, and policy.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges and also new innovations for treatment of addictive behaviors, including broader use and acceptance of telehealth for addictive behaviors, as well as changes to requirements for accessing medication treatment for opioid use disorder. In addition to the lives lost to COVID-19, there is early indication that some individuals are increasing substance use, and economic challenges are likely to be magnified in already economically disadvantaged groups.

Increasing access to care and supporting individuals in hard-hit communities will continue to be a challenge for our field.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Are you making any changes?

We are making several changes to the journal including new article types (registered reports, commentaries) and open science badges to encourage open science practices (e.g., preregistration, open data). We also require authors to register clinical trials and conform manuscripts to Journal Article Reporting Standards and Meta-Analysis Reporting Standards, as described in Applebaum et al. (2018).

We are also thrilled to have two special issues planned for 2021: one on brief interventions for alcohol use among young adults and one devoted to the combined use of alcohol and cannabis.

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