Dr. Alicia Allen Awarded Prestigious NIH ‘New Innovator Award’

Alicia Allen, PhD, MPH, assistant professor at the College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, has been recognized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a New Innovator Award, an honor bestowed upon extraordinarily creative early-career scientists spearheading highly innovative and unusually impactful biomedical or behavioral research.

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The New Innovator Award is part of the NIH High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, which according to the NIH “catalyzes scientific discovery by supporting research proposals that, due to their inherent risk, may struggle in the traditional peer-review process despite their transformative potential.”

“The breadth of innovative science put forth by the 2020 cohort of early-career and seasoned investigators is impressive and inspiring,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD. “I am confident that their work will propel biomedical and behavioral research and lead to improvements in human health.”

The award will support Dr. Allen’s investigation of the relationship between postpartum hormones and opioid relapse, addressing a research gap in strategies for preventing postpartum opioid relapse. Her team will be among the first to measure hormones such as progesterone and oxytocin during the first few months after childbirth in women with and without opioid use disorder. After identifying hormonal patterns associated with recovery from opioid abuse, they will identify therapies that can replicate these protective hormone levels in the hopes of treating opioid addiction in the postpartum period.

“When most people think of opioid addiction, they don’t typically think of pregnant women,” said Dr. Allen, who also is a member of the Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center and the UArizona Cancer Center. “The truth, however, is that the prevalence of opioid addiction during pregnancy has increased by nearly 500% over the past 15 years. While pregnancy presents a strong motivation for seeking and complying with treatment for addiction, the postpartum period is associated with a nearly 80% risk for relapse within six months of delivery.”

In 2020, 53 early-career scientists across the country were recognized with a New Innovator Award. The award was established in 2007 and comes with a five-year, $2.3 million NIH grant.

“Dr. Allen is an exceptionally talented and promising researcher,” said Myra Muramoto, MD, MPH, professor and head of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, and Cancer Center member. “Her novel research into the hormonal connections to opioid addiction and relapse in postpartum women is very timely and critically important to reduce the impact of the opioid epidemic on women, their families, and the community.”