A Mobile App to Address Co-Occurring Sleep Problems and Heavy Alcohol Use among Veterans Outside of Care Settings

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The long-term goal of this proposal is to improve treatment outcomes for post 9/11 veterans with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and insomnia who are not currently accessing care through the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System (VA) or other settings. Many post-9/11 veterans struggle with AUD and this can be especially pronounced with the co-occurrence of insomnia. With upwards of 50% of veterans who have behavioral health needs not seeking treatment, it is imperative to utilize advances in technology to develop and test interventions that can reach non-treatment seeking veterans and target both symptoms of insomnia and AUD. CBT-I is the first line of treatment for insomnia, and it has been found to improve insomnia symptoms among veterans and other populations across a number of studies. However, very little research has examined the efficacy of CBT-I in addressing AUD symptoms; indeed, AUD is often a criterion excluding individuals from CBT-I trials. CBT-I is often delivered individually, in groups, or face-to-face over telehealth, yet these formats do little to reach veterans with insomnia and AUD that do not seek behavioral health care. Therefore, we propose to beta test and conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial of a promising mobile app for addressing insomnia among veterans (Insomnia Coach), enhanced with evidence-based brief alcohol intervention content, among post 9/11 veterans with insomnia and AUD that are outside of treatment settings. The engaging and easy-to-use mobile app integrates aspects of CBT-I with brief alcohol intervention content (e.g., drinking normative feedback, relapse prevention strategies) to improve upon both AUD and insomnia symptoms, which often go unaddressed in treatments focused on a single disorder, but are necessary to target in integrated treatments due to the interplay of AUD and insomnia symptoms. This project contains four aims: (1) refine and add brief alcohol intervention content to the popular VA-developed Insomnia Coach mobile app and test usability, feasibility, and acceptability of the app in a beta testing phase, (2) test the efficacy of the enhanced Insomnia Coach on alcohol use and insomnia outcomes compared to control, (3) assess mechanisms of change to learn how and for whom the intervention works best, and (4) explore the intervention's potential to increase treatment initiation (willingness to seek care, preparatory behaviors) among veterans with AUD who are often difficult to engage in care due to logistical and stigma-related barriers. The unique strengths of this proposal are its focus on an underserved population (including targeted recruitment of women and racial/ethnic minority veterans), utilization of mobile technology for intervention delivery to overcome barriers to care, and use of a novel integrated intervention to target both AUD and insomnia. This study intends to produce a viable, evidence-based, and easy-to-access treatment that can have substantial impacts on substance use outcomes.