The Responsible Gaming Association of New Mexico (RGANM), a collaboration of many of the state’s Native American owned casinos, awarded NCRG with a grant of $300,000 to coordinate a competitive grants program on the impact of gambling on New Mexico, especially the state’s subpopulations. In December 2017, the NCRG awarded a grant of $291,868 to HBSA, a supporting organization of Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, to fund “New Mexico: A Study of at risk Youth and Adults.”
The aim of the grant is to examine gambling behavior among adolescents and adults across New Mexico with specific focus on subpopulations of race/ethnicity, military involvement, parents of minors, sexual minorities, housing unstable, and college students. Building on existing long-term relationships with prevention communities across the state, the investigators will use a culturally competent, mixed-methods data collection approach to gather data from youth and adults across all regions of the state including rural, frontier, tribal, and urban locations to estimate problem gambling prevalence and statistically model the association with co-occurring risk and protective factors.
The RGANM works to promote awareness of problem gambling and of the resources that are available across New Mexico. It provides educational materials about problem gambling, and funds treatment and counseling services. Among the association’s training efforts, every employee at every tribal member casino is required to take an annual class in recognizing problem gambling behaviors so that appropriate casino employees may offer that patron information and assistance.
The NCRG thanks the RGANM for its support of this important research.
