Longitudinal Trajectories and Outcomes of Teens that Ride with Impaired Drivers &Drive Impaired

Motor vehicle crashes have remained the leading cause of death among adolescents for decades. Today, Riding with an Impaired Driver (RWI) and Driving While Impaired (DWI) among young drivers is prevalent. The presentation will describe recent theory-driven, multistage, mixed-methods investigation focused on the development of trajectories of RWI/DWI behaviors in adolescents and will provide early insights of trajectory influence on health, education, and employment among emerging adults.

Dr. Federico Vaca was recently recruited back to UCI from the Yale School of Medicine where he was Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Emergency Medicine. During his tenure at Yale, he established the Yale Developmental Neurocognitive Driving Simulation Research Center (DrivSim Lab).Now here at UCI he is Professor and Executive Vice Chair in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of California Irvine’s School of Medicine – Department of Emergency Medicine. He is a board-certified emergency medicine physician and physician-scientist. He previously served as a Medical Fellow for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in Washington, D.C. Over the last 20 years, his research has focused on occupant safety, adolescent development and behaviors that influence the risk of motor vehicle crash injury as well as health disparities in alcohol use disorders, impaired driving, and crash-injury. His research has been funded by the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), NIH’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), and the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).Dr. Vaca has chaired and served on several NIH scientific review committees, chaired national expert panels directed by the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering’s Transportation Research Board, and was previously appointed by the U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services to serve on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.