Harvard Awarded Grant to Study Self-Exclusion in Missouri
It's been seven years since Missouri instituted a self-exclusion program allowing people to ban themselves from casinos in the state, and in August funding was awarded for a scientific study to determine the overall effectiveness of the program.
The Port Authority of Kansas City has awarded a $297,000 grant to Harvard Medical School's Division on Addictions (DOA) to investigate the self-exclusion program in Missouri. The study grant was financed through funds contributed to the Port Authority's Problem Gambling Fund by casinos operating in Kansas City, Mo., as part of an agreement the casinos have with the city to do business in the area.
The two-year study will provide a science-based evaluation of the program and test whether self-exclusion has a place in the intervention and treatment of disordered gamblers.
"The research serves as an assessment of the value of self-exclusion as a tool to help problem gamblers recover," said Kevin Mullally, executive director of the Missouri Gaming Commission. "It will help determine whether the procedures used in the program are the most effective ways of treating people with a gambling problem."
In addition, Mullally says the study will help public health officials determine if there are any crucial elements missing from their disordered gambling treatment programs.
"Like a lot of medical treatment, it isn't always a single thing that leads to effective treatment," Mullally said. "Most of the time, a combination of treatments is the best approach. We may find that here - that self-exclusion by itself isn't an effective treatment [for disordered gambling], but combined with other things, it may be effective. We want to find out what those things are."
Howard Shaffer, Ph.D., director of the DOA, and Richard LaBrie, Ed.D., associate director of research and data analysis at the DOA, will be leading the investigation - the first scientific study of gambling self-exclusion. Under the terms of the grant, the research team will analyze follow-up data on a sample of the individuals enrolled in Missouri's self-exclusion program, the first government-sponsored program of its kind in the country.
The study will be conducted in two phases. The first phase will involve coding the individuals in the sample by geographical location. This process provides estimates of the relative prevalence of problem gamblers in different areas of the state. In the second phase, researchers will interview a large portion of the disassociated persons sample with the use of a computer-aided program. The information collected from the interviews will provide a scientifically rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of the self-exclusion program. The goal will then be to use that information to promote evidence-based decisions on public health and public policy in Missouri and other states.
Missouri created its self-exclusion program in 1996. The list includes more than 6,000 disassociated persons and grows at a rate of 90 per month.
