Student Presenter(s): Deena Albert, Kelly Borges
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Sidra Ghafoor
Department: Osteopathic Medicine
School/College: College of Osteopathic Medicine, Long Island

In 2018, approximately 20.3 million Americans aged 12 or older reported suffering from substance use disorder (SUD) related to their use of alcohol or illicit drugs in the past year. It is imperative that we remember that addiction is treatable, and recovery is possible. Our nonprofit Fitness In Recovery proposes the implementation of dosed group exercise programming across clinical, collegiate, and community settings. Based on the abundance of evidence supporting the therapeutic role of exercise in mental illness, we posit uniquely-delivered group exercise programs have the potential to accelerate systemic addiction recovery by collectively improving multiple health domains adversely affected by addiction (e.g. sleep, cognitive function, mood). Mechanistically, we hypothesize dosed exercise elicits specific neurotransmitter responses associated with addiction recovery, thereby alleviating and potentially reversing the hedonic deficit underlying the physiology of addiction relapse. Preliminary data from our pilot program at an intensive outpatient recovery center in Philadelphia supports the role of group exercise for improving symptoms of depression and anxiety. We aim to expand our studies through clinical trials in the community, designed with critical input from experts in the fields of addiction medicine, psychiatry, neurology, and exercise physiology.