5-Year Strategic Vision/Plan

With input from Service partners relative to what AADAP should be as a program and national leader in the fish drug approval effort, a Strategic Vision document was prepared in 2014. Our overall goal is to help provide tools regulated by FDA for use in fish management to support conservation of the nation’s fish and aquatic resources, including numerous imperiled fish species, in the face of declining and diminished aquatic habitat, expanding human population, changing social demographics, competition for human and financial resources, climate change, increasing demand for limited water resources, and other challenges.

To better coordinate and manage AADAP research activities conducted to support fish drug approvals in the United States, a 5-year Strategic Research Plan was also developed. Input on research priorities was provided by Service fish culture and fish health professionals as well as from fisheries professionals from Service partners like the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies. The goal of this plan is to generate data to support FDA-approval of drugs critically needed by fish culturists, fish health biologists, veterinarians, fishery researchers, and fisheries managers. This will be accomplished through collaborative research with cooperators where field studies can be conducted. A major difficulty in generating effectiveness data is identifying locations (e.g., labs, hatcheries, academic institutions) where studies can be conducted. In the case of evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutants, locations need to be identified that have recurring, somewhat predictable disease outbreak involving the desired test fish species, adequate water flow to conduct the study, and an adequate number of test tanks to conduct small-scale studies.