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News
Volume 12, Number 1
January/February 1997 |
Constituents Help Shape NIDA's Research Agenda
By Margi Grady NIDA NOTES Associate Editor
NIDA constituent groups have become instrumental in furthering the Institute's
public health goals, NIDA Director Dr. Alan I. Leshner told participants
at NIDA's Third Annual Constituent Conference in Lansdowne, Virginia, in
November. In particular, Dr. Leshner praised the groups for working together
at previous meetings to formulate recommendations for NIDA activities.
Constituent input has helped the Institute pursue its dual public health
missions of conducting drug abuse research and disseminating the findings
in a form that the drug abuse field and the public can use and understand,
Dr. Leshner said. In return, the constituents have benefited because their
recommen-dations have guided the Institute in funding research that addresses
the real-world needs of the field, he noted.
In the 3 years since its inception, the Constituent Conference has helped
focus and strengthen this advisory role for the constituent groups, Dr.
Leshner said. The 2-day conference was attended this year by representatives
from 48 national organizations involved in the field of drug abuse. (See
"Conference Draws More Constituents," p. 17.) The meeting included
both general sessions and informal work groups in which participants met
to prepare this year's recommendations to the Institute.
As evidence of the constituents' prominent role in guiding the Institute,
Dr. Leshner presented a "report card" containing NIDA activities
that address recommendations made by constituent representatives at previous
conferences. The report card itemizes more than 300 activities that the
Institute has undertaken in the broad areas of treatment research, HIV/AIDS
research, prevention and epidemiology research, health services research,
research training, information dissemination, and NIDA's organizational
structure. Dr. Leshner highlighted several examples, including:
- funding 13 grants to study ways to link drug abuse treatment and medical
care;
- planning a multicomponent treatment initiative for 1997 to improve
the Institute's existing research portfolio and to take treatments shown
to be effective in small-scale studies and evaluate them in large-scale
clinical trials;
- issuing a request for applications calling for collaboration among
universities, research institutes, and the pharmaceutical industry to expedite
transition of preclinical research findings on cocaine therapies to clinical
studies;
- establishing a program to provide supplemental funding to ongoing research
projects at the National Institutes of Health for the study of issues related
to drug abuse and HIV/AIDS;
- launching a methamphetamine research initiative and sponsoring a regional
conference on methamphetamine to complement other national efforts to address
increases in methamphetamine use in areas across the country; n cosponsoring,
with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a National Conference on Drug
Abuse Prevention Research (see "National Conference Showcases Effective
Drug Abuse Prevention Programs," p. 8);
- cosponsoring a meeting covering prevention and treatment research on
child and adolescent substance abuse at the annual meeting of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry;
- funding new studies on the economics of treatment, barriers to access
and utilization of treatment, translating new interventions into practice,
and the cost-effectiveness of treatment;
- cosponsoring, with the American Psychological Association, the Conference
on Drug Abuse (CODA) at the association's annual convention;
- holding several NIDA Town Meetings across the Nation to bridge the
"great disconnect" between public perceptions and scientific
facts about drug abuse; n upgrading and expanding the NIDA home page on
the World Wide Web;
- establishing the new NIDA Regional Neuroimaging Center at Brookhaven
National Laboratory in Upton, New York, in collaboration with the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.S. Department of
Energy; and
- expanding NIDA's National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse from 12 to
18 members.
"We were again pleased by the tremendous turnout for our conference,"
said Dr. Timothy P. Condon, NIDA's associate director for science policy,
whose office organized the meeting. "These meetings provide the Institute
with critical input to help us ensure that NIDA's research is relevant,
user friendly, and used."
From NIDA NOTES, January/February, 1997
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