John Roll, PhD
Washington Institute for Mental Health Research & Training
- Telephone: 509.358.7612
- E-mail: johnroll@wsu.edu
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- News: Roll awarded more than $4 million to develop programs for treatment of substance abuse and mental illness in Washington’s rural areas.
Evidence-based Answers for Substance Abuse
John Roll, director of the Washington
Institute for Mental Health Research and Training,
explains that his research addresses both basic and
applied questions about drug use. On the basic science
side, Roll examines behavioral pharmacology: how drugs,
organisms, and environment interact to influence the
use of drugs and the development of dependence.
On the applied side, Roll examines the effectiveness of
behavioral therapies that get drug users to replace
drug use with other behaviors that are more rewarding,
also known as contingency management. He has studied
behavioral treatments for smoking in teens and for the
use of drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine,
including an evaluation of behavioral therapy in
combination with drug court procedures.
While his work has focused on treatment, Roll said his
goal is to move more toward the prevention side. He
takes a big-picture approach to drug use, believing
that it must be tackled through a combination of
treatment, prevention, and law enforcement—as
well as an understanding of the challenges faced by
those particularly at risk.
Roll has acted as a principal investigator or co-/sub-
investigator on numerous grants totaling several
million dollars, most of them from the National
Institute on Drug Abuse (a unit of the National
Institutes of Health).
