Project Overview

Woebot for Substance Use Disorders (W-SUDs) is a two-phase NIDA-funded SBIR. Presently, W-SUDs, a novel digital therapeutic, is being evaluated in the Phase I pilot. Phase II will investigate W-SUDs’s efficacy compared to an active control condition.

Since the initial award, and across mere months, Covid-19 became a global pandemic, and users worldwide came to Woebot to discuss it and seek help. The company responded by building and deploying Covid-19 specific programming (W-C19) in March 2020. W-C19 elements have been integrated into W-SUDs; we felt it was timely and appropriate to address users' concerns about the pandemic and demonstrate that Woebot was ‘intelligent’ to the crisis.

Experts expect Covid-19’s direct and indirect impact upon individuals with SUDs to be particularly heavy. These individuals often have physical vulnerabilities, which increase the relative risk of death from Covid-19, and face limited health care access -- fundamentally challenging given often comorbid mental illness. Moreover, high rates of housing insecurity hinders compliance with shelter-in-place and social distancing recommendations, thereby increasing contagion risk.

This project, with the timely addition of a randomized controlled trial comparing W-SUDs to a waitlist control (WL), expands understanding of W-SUDs’ efficacy whilst investigating Covid-19’s impact upon the SUD population. Secular trends of increased substance use are anticipated given Covid-19 stressors (e.g., shelter-in- place, disease concerns, economic strife, under-/unemployment). Hence, the WL condition is essential for testing W-SUDs’ efficacy in mitigating these Covid-19 related downstream effects.

Grant Number

3R44DA048712-01S1

Principal Investigator(s)

Research Aims

This project extends the parent grant by:

1) adding a randomized controlled evaluation of W-SUDs compared to WL and, 

2)investigating potential between group differences on

  • Substance use,
  • COVID-19 related components (e.g., social distancing; employment and parental factors), and,
  • Other SUD treatment engagement. 

While 20.2 million (8.4%) American adults had a SUD within the past year, only 20% received treatment, given significant treatment access barriers.

W-SUDs:

1) is poised to reduce or eliminate common yet significant barriers to traditional SUD treatment;

2) offers virtual access, optimal for socially distancing and shelter-in-place adherence; 

3) has unconstrained and immediate scale potential; and

4) delivers content text-based conversation, optimal for engagement.

This study offers immediate access to a digital therapeutic in a resource constrained, socially distanced healthcare ecosystem for an already vulnerable and underserved population, likely faced with readily growing psychological challenges.