Jason A. Oliver, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. He completed his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of South Florida in 2015 followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Addiction Neuroscience at Duke University. After completion of fellowship, Dr. Oliver remained on as faculty at Duke University where he conducted research on tobacco use and maintained an active clinical practice specializing in health behavior change and coping with chronic illness. He joined the TSET Health Promotion Research Center at SCC and OUHSC in 2021.
Dr. Oliver's research program draws on concepts and methods from basic, clinical and epidemiological research to help improve our understanding of why people engage in unhealthy behaviors and develop novel behavioral and pharmacological interventions that can help people lead healthier lives. One current topic of focus in Dr. Oliver's lab is the development and testing of interventions that can curtail the impact of environment on smoking behavior by enabling smokers to better cope with the "breakthrough" cravings that can emerge in settings they associate with smoking. Another focus is on understanding the role that alternative rewards (i.e. pleasurable activities incompatible with smoking, drinking or other drug use) can play in the development and maintenance of addiction. Cutting across both topics is an effort to better understand how these factors may contribute to health disparities. For example, by increasing exposure to environments where smoking, drinking or other drug use are common or by limiting access to alternative rewards.
Dr. Oliver has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Cancer Institute, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the American Heart Association.
Education:
Degree-Granting Institutions:
- University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, PhD, 2015, Clinical Psychology
- State University of New York at Buffalo, Amherst, NY, BA/BS, 2005, Psychology and Business Administration
Postgraduate Training:
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Addiction Neuroscience, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, 2015-2017
- Clinical Psychology Resident, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, 2014-2015
Funding:
Active
Nicotine withdrawal and reward processing: Connecting neurobiology to real-world behavior
K23DA042898
Role: Principal Investigator
This career development award examines the effects of nicotine withdrawal on neural responses to non-drug rewards and how these relate to real-world behavior measured using ecological momentary assessment.
Project Period: 4/1/2017 – 3/31/2022
Funding Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Total Costs: $855,450
Anhedonia and activity patterns: Working towards a geospatial understanding of etiology and intervention
#28608 (NARSAD Young Investigator Award)
Role: Principal Investigator
This project examines the relationship between anhedonia and movement patterns as measured via GPS, as well as whether the effects of behavioral activation on anhedonia are mediated by changes in activity patterns.
Project Period: 1/15/2020 – 1/15/2022
Organization: Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
Total Costs: $75,000
Clarifying the role of tobacco retail outlets on maternal smoking during pregnancy and child secondhand smoke exposure
R01CA239595
Role: Co-Investigator (PI: Bernard Fuemmeler)
This secondary data analysis project examines whether TRO density relates to cotinine biomarkers in pregnant women and the healthcare utilization of their offspring throughout early childhood.
Project Period: 5/2/2019 – 4/30/2023
Funding Agency: National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Total Costs: $2,496,983
Deep learning-based image analysis for assessing real-time smoking risk
R21DA047131
Role: Co-Investigator (PI: Joseph McClernon)
This project seeks to apply machine learning algorithms to detect smoking contexts from images of smokers’ personal environments as an initial step towards the development of a novel mobile health intervention.
Project Period: 9/1/2018 – 8/31/2020
Funding Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Total Costs: $401,458
Completed
Neurobehavioral substrates of propranolol’s effects on drug cue reactivity
R03DA043756
Role: Principal Investigator
This translational pilot project builds off extensive pre-clinical findings to examine the acute effects of beta-adrenergic blockade on neural and behavioral responses to smoking cues.
Project Period: 9/1/2017 – 8/31/2019
Funding Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Total Costs: $238,500
Paving the road to cardiovascular health: Translational science for smoking cessation
13PRE14660076
Role: Principal Investigator
This predoctoral fellowship provided support for my dissertation research examining the effects of nicotine withdrawal on EEG and event-related potential (ERP) indices of motivation and reward response.
Project Period: 1/1/2014 – 12/31/2015
Funding Agency: American Heart Association (AHA)
Total Costs: $50,360
Select Publications:
- Oliver, J. A., Sweitzer, M. M., Engelhard, M. M., Hallyburton, M. B., Ribisl, K. M., McClernon, F. J. (in press). Identifying neural signatures of tobacco retail outlet exposure: Preliminary validation of a ‘community neuroscience’ paradigm. Addiction Biology.
- Oliver, J.A., & Foulds, J. (in press). Association between cigarette smoking frequency and tobacco use disorder in US Adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
- Liautaud, M. M., Kechter, A., Bello, M. S., Guillot, C. R., Oliver, J. A., Banks, D. E., D’Orazio, L. M., & Leventhal, A. M. (in press). Anhedonia in tobacco withdrawal among African American smokers. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.
- Engelhard, M. M., Oliver, J. A., McClernon, F. J. (in press). Digital EnviroTyping: Quantifying environmental determinants of health and behavior. NPJ: Digital Medicine.
- Vilardaga, R., Rizo, J., Palenski, P., Oliver, J. A., & McClernon, F. J. (in press). Pilot randomized controlled trial of a novel smoking cessation app designed for individuals with co-occurring tobacco dependence and serious mental illness. Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
- Oliver, J. A., Pacek, L. R., Locey, E. N., Fish, L. J., Hendricks, P. S., & Pollak, K. I. (2019). Lack of utility of cigarettes per day cutoffs for clinical and laboratory smoking research. Addictive Behaviors, 98, 106066.
- Engelhard, M. M., Oliver, J. A., Henao, R., Hallyburton, M. B., Carin, L. E., Conklin, C. A. & McClernon, F. J. (2019). Identifying smoking-risk environments from everyday images with Deep Learning. JAMA Network Open, 2, 1-13.
- Maynard, O. M., McClernon, F. J., Oliver, J. A., & Munafo, M. R. (2019). Using neuroscience to inform tobacco control policy. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 21, 739-746.
- Oliver, J. A., Hallyburton, M. B., Pacek, L. R., Mitchell, J. T., Vilardaga, R., Fuemmeler, B. F., & McClernon, F. J. (2018). What do smokers want in a smartphone-based cessation application? Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 20, 1507-1514.
- Fowler, C. D., Gipson, C. D., Kleykamp, A., Rupprecht, L. E., Rees, V. W., Gould, T. J., Oliver, J. A., Bagdas, D., Damaj, M. I., Schmidt, H., Harrell, P. T., Duncan, A., & De Biasi, M. (2018). Basic science and public policy: Informed regulation for nicotine and tobacco products. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 20, 789-799.
- Oliver, J. A., Evans, D. E., Addicott, M. A., Brandon, T. H., & Drobes, D. J. (2017). Nicotine withdrawal induces neural deficits in reward processing. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 19, 686-693.
- Oliver, J. A., Blank, M. D., Janse Van Rensburg, K., Macqueen, D. A. Brandon, T. H., & Drobes, D. J. (2013). Nicotine interactions with low-dose alcohol: Pharmacological influences on smoking and drinking motivation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122, 1154-1165.