National Institute on Drug Abuse
Director's Report to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse
May, 2000
Planned Meetings
A conference, Assessing the Impact of Childhood Interventions on Subsequent Drug Abuse (Dr. Meyer Glantz, OD, DESPR, chair), will be held in Washington, D.C., at the Hotel Washington on May 23-24, 2000. NIDA and NIMH are co-sponsoring this meeting to assess the impact of mental health treatments for childhood psychopathologies on subsequent risk for drug abuse to assist drug and mental health investigators develop this important research area. More details are available at http://www.nida.nih.gov/Meetings/AICISDA/AICISDA.html.
A symposium, Drug Addiction Treatment for Women: Does Gender Matter?, co-chaired by Drs. Cora Lee Wetherington, NIDA's Women's Health Coordinator, and Betty Tai, Director of NIDA's Clinical Trials Network, will occur at the June, 2000 meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Speakers will be Drs. Cora Lee Wetherington, Kenneth Perkins (University of Pittsburgh), Karla Moras (University of Pennsylvania), Kathleen Brady (Medical University of South Carolina), and Rolley Johnson (Johns Hopkins University). The symposium is co-sponsored by NIDA's Women and Gender Research Group and the Treatment Workgroup. In order to foster the conduct of research on women and gender differences by junior investigators, NIDA (via the Women and Gender Research Group) will award a Women and Gender Travel Award to 20 junior investigators who will present a paper or poster on this topic at the 2000 meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nearly 60 junior investigators applied for this award.
Drs. Timothy Condon, Cindy Miner, and Mark Swieter are organizing a grant writing workshop to be held at the annual College on Problems of Drug Dependence meeting, June 17- 22, 2000 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
NIDA's Behavioral Science Working Group is planning two events at the American Psychological Association convention in Washington D.C. this August in collaboration with the Science Directorate of the APA. A pre-convention workshop will be held on Thursday, August 3, 2000 which will focus on early career behavioral scientists who are interested in, or who may already be conducting research in drug abuse and addictions (including nicotine). The workshop begins with introductory remarks by Dr. Alan I. Leshner, NIDA Director. Breakout sessions for graduate students and postdocs will focus on a) drug addiction research topics, led by invited NIDA-supported researchers; and, b) more advanced investigators who would like help with grant writing. Participants will be given a notebook to guide them through the grants maze at NIH, and will hear from both program and review staff at NIDA. In addition, eight invited lectures throughout the Focus on Science program at APA (August 4-6, 2000) are planned along the theme of "Faces of Vulnerability to Drug Abuse". These lectures will be co-hosted by seven APA Divisions and NIDA and include: Kathleen Merikangas, The Search for Genes for Drug Abuse: Promises and Pitfalls; Nick Goeders, The Role of Stress in the Motivation for Drug Abuse -- Preclinical Models; Ralph Tartar, Etiology of Substance Abuse: From Individual Differences to Different Individuals; John Falk, Environmental Sources of Vulnerability to Drug Abuse; Jose Szapocznik, An Ecological Developmental Approach to Vulnerability; Alan Leshner, Vulnerability to Drug Abuse and Addiction: A Quintessential Biobehavioral Issue; Marilyn Carroll, Vulnerability to Drug Abuse: How it Can be Avoided or Accelerated?; and Howard Moss, Behavioral Undercontrol and Family Liability for Substance Abuse.
In collaboration with the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, ODS, National Center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, NCCAM, Dr. Jag Khalsa of the Center on AIDS and Other Medical and Health Consequences of Drug Abuse, CAMCODA, will conduct a workshop this Summer 2000 on Intervention Modalities (chemo-& alternative) in Drug Abuse and HIV/AIDS. The workshop participants will identify the gaps in knowledge in such major areas as incidence and prevalence of metabolic and endocrine disorders in drug abusers with HIV/AIDS and various intervention modalities such as chemointervention, alternative and complementary therapies for the prevention/treatment of these clinical complications. It is anticipated that the speakers will provide NIDA, ODS, NCCAM and other attending researchers directions for future research on the subject. The abstracts and recommendations for future research will be placed on the NIDA website. In addition, an executive summary of the proceedings will be published in a professional biomedical journal.
National CTN Steering Committee Meetings are planned for the follow dates and locations: May 23-24, 2000, in Hartford, CT; July 19-20, 2000, in Portland, OR; September 19-20, 2000, in Philadelphia, PA; and November 1-2, 2000, in Bethesda, Maryland.
A second CTN Kick-Off Meeting is planned for October 31, 2000, Bethesda, MD, for the second round of awards for the CTN RFA.
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