Number 37, August 2011

A new fellowship program will enable talented Mexican postdoctoral scientists to devote 12 months to drug abuse prevention research in the United States.

NIDA and the Mexican National Institute of Psychiatry Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz (NIP), along with the Mexican National Commission Against Addictions (CONADIC) and the Society for Prevention Research, have established the United States–Mexico Drug Abuse Prevention Research Fellowship.

Modeled after the successful NIDA INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellowship, the Prevention Research Fellowship will provide Mexican postdoctoral scientists with 12 months of research training with a NIDA grantee in the United States, along with professional development and grant-writing activities. Fellows may investigate any area of drug abuse prevention research, such as prevention intervention research, prevention services research, prevention methodology, or drug abuse prevention as HIV/AIDS prevention. The NIDA International Program will administer the Prevention Research Fellowship with assistance from the Division of Epidemiology, Services and Prevention Research.

The fellowship is part of the ongoing collaborative efforts between the United States and Mexico to reduce initiation and use of drugs, the progression from abuse to dependence, and drug abuse-related HIV transmission. NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, M.D., and NIP Director María Elena Medina-Mora Icaza, Ph.D., signed the memorandum of understanding creating the fellowship on June 23, 2011, during the 9th Binational U.S.–Mexico Demand Reduction Conference in Mexico.

Click here for more details and application information.

“Find good partners, start small, and take advantage of every research training and funding opportunity available.” That was the theme of presenters at the 16th Annual NIDA International Forum, which featured reports on U.S. initiatives to improve evidence-based drug treatment, research training, and policy implementation around the world.

NIDA International Program Director Steven W. Gust, Ph.D., chaired the meeting, which was held June 17–20, 2011, in Hollywood, Florida, as a satellite to the Annual Scientific Meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD). More than 255 participants from 51 countries participated in the plenary session, workshops, and networking activities.

A joint CPDD/NIDA International Forum Poster Session featured presentations by 146 U.S. and international researchers. Plenary session speakers included NIDA Deputy Director David Shurtleff, Ph.D., as well as James E. Herrington, Ph.D., M.P.H, Fogarty International Center, and Richard H. Needle, Ph.D., M.P.H., U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. A panel of NIDA grantees organized by Division of Pharmacotherapies and Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse Acting Deputy Director Ivan Montoya, M.D., M.P.H., described recent progress in developing pharmacotherapies to treat addiction.

Another panel of NIDA grantees offered advice on building international research collaborations that could compete for funding, and a group of former International Program fellows reviewed the challenges of collecting and publishing reliable youth risk behavior data in Muslim-majority countries. NIDA staff chaired sessions where international scientists presented research reports on basic science, HIV/AIDS, epidemiology, prevention, and treatment.

See more information about the Forum, including the full Executive Summary, Program Book, photos, and a list of presentations (available upon request).

The NIDA International Program held a series of webinars this spring to help participants of the 16th NIDA International Forum prepare their poster and oral presentations.

• Powerful Poster Presentations used draft posters from 2011 Forum participants to demonstrate how a well-designed scientific poster can help researchers communicate effectively with colleagues by selecting information that attracts viewers to the poster, organizing the contents for maximum clarity, using text and illustrations to enhance the poster, and making professional connections at the poster session.
• Scientifically Speaking: How To Prepare an Effective Presentation helped oral presenters describe complex concepts and data concisely, structure the presentation for maximum clarity, use images effectively, prepare titles that attract attention, and begin and end the presentation smoothly.

The webinars were recorded and are available on the Professional Development Webinars section of the NIDA International Program Web site.

Locating potential research partners just got easier. A new Collaborative Matching Service (CMS) allows drug abuse and addiction scientists, policymakers, and providers to identify people, projects, and organizations with common research interests.

CMS is a searchable database within the NIDA International Virtual Collaboratory (NIVC), which helps members exchange research data and ideas and participate in creating online communities and working groups. Members of the Virtual Collaboratory can search CMS for people, organizations, projects, and job opportunities using a combination of criteria, including geographic region, individual country, or keywords. NIVC members are urged to update their profile information to reflect their current locations and research projects.

Recent awards through the NIDA International Program Announcements (PA) on International Research Collaboration on Drug Abuse and Addiction Research will support four research teams investigating drug-related HIV:

• Julia Dickson-Gomez, Ph.D., Medical College of Wisconsin, and Mauricio Gaborit, Ph.D., Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, El Salvador, will test a multilevel community-based intervention to increase HIV testing and reduce sexual risk behaviors among crack users in San Salvador. Social network HIV testing will be conducted in four low-income community clinics in the region, and peer leaders will be trained to recruit and lead the intervention among 400 crack users. The researchers will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the impact of the intervention on community capacity, the reach and intensity of the intervention, and population-level behavior changes among crack users. The team also will conduct organizational and community-level assessments to assess the translation, scale up, and sustainability of this evidence-based intervention in a real-world setting. The award is a competitive renewal of the team’s previous R01 grant.
• Biological and behavioral data from nine longitudinal, prospective studies of injection drug users (IDUs) will be merged with data on incident HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection outcomes under a new international collaboration led by Kimberly Page, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco. The merged data pool includes 4,091 IDUs who have been followed for a collective 9,016 person-years of observation, 859 incident HCV infections with longitudinal follow-up, and 575 HIV infections, offering the statistical power needed to draw conclusions about temporal trends in HIV and HCV incidence, examine HCV incidence by HIV status and sexual behavior, estimate rates and determinants of HCV viral clearance and reinfection, examine the effects of HCV infection disclosure on risk behaviors, and evaluate outcomes related to clinical treatment of acute HCV in IDUs. Researchers from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and United States will use the new R01 award to conduct new, secondary analyses on the merged data, and they have committed to long-term cooperation in epidemiology, behavioral studies, clinical research, and laboratory science.
• Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, and María Remeidos Lozada Romero, M.D., M.P.H., ProCOMUSIDA, Mexico, will conduct a longitudinal, mixed-methods study to address the impact of Mexican drug policy reform on the HIV risk and protective factors among IDUs in Tijuana. In 2010, a Mexican law decriminalized possession of small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana for personal use. The law requires Mexican police to track the number of times an individual is apprehended in possession of these decriminalized amounts of controlled substances; after three apprehensions, the individual must enter drug treatment to avoid incarceration. The research team will track outcomes among 750 IDUs over 6 years to assess: (1) changes in knowledge, attitudes, and experiences about the new law and the impact of those changes on drug-using behaviors and treatment readiness; (2) trends in drug use behaviors; (3) health risks and protective behaviors; (4) incidence and experiences with voluntary and involuntary drug treatment, including the proportion of drug users choosing treatment over incarceration; and (5) law enforcement practices and interactions with IDUs. The award is a competitive renewal of the team’s previous R01 grant.
• Under an R21 small grant award, Avelardo Valdez, Ph.D., University of Houston, and Guillermina Natera Rey, Ph.D., Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramon de la Fuente Muñiz, Mexico, will conduct a social epidemiological study on the emergence and spread of crack in the Federal District of Mexico. The team will interview 150 adults who self-report smoking crack to explore the processes associated with the initiation and rapid spread of crack use and related high-risk sexual and drug-using behaviors. Results of that analysis will contribute to the development of a theory-based intervention for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in this population.

Find out more about the International Research Collaboration on Drug Abuse and Addiction Research Program Announcements.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced earlier this summer that the Federal Government is contemplating various ways to enhance the regulations governing research on human subjects.

Before making changes to the regulations, the Government is seeking the public’s input on an array of issues related to the ethics, safety, and oversight of human research. The changes under consideration are in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), “Human Subjects Research Protections: Enhancing Protections for Research Subjects and Reducing Burden, Delay, and Ambiguity for Investigators,” published in the July 25, 2011, Federal Register.

International investigators supported by the U.S. Federal Government may be affected by the proposed changes as they relate to Institutional Review Board assessments of multisite studies, informed consent, and clarifying and harmonizing regulatory requirements and agency guidance, among other issues.

Ten U.S. medical institutions have just introduced the first accredited residency programs in addiction medicine. Doctors who have completed medical school and a primary residency will be able to spend a year studying the relationship between addiction, heredity, and brain chemistry.

The new accreditation is the result of work by the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM), which ensures that addiction medicine physicians have the knowledge and skills to prevent, recognize, and treat addiction. Founded in 2007, ABAM certifies addiction medicine physicians across a range of medical specialties. The board sets standards for physician education, assesses physicians’ knowledge, and requires and tracks life-long education. ABAM expects to accredit an additional 10 to 15 residency programs this year.

Each institution has developed its own curriculum, although all residents, regardless of their institution, will learn to recognize and diagnose substance abuse, conduct brief interventions that spell out the treatment options, and prescribe the proper medications. The doctors also will be expected to understand the legal and practical implications of substance abuse. For more information about the new U.S. addiction residency programs, visit ABAM.

Although ABAM certification is open only to licensed physicians from the United States, U.S. Territories, and Canada, physicians from other countries may become certified as addiction specialists through the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM) exam, which is open to graduates of any medical school recognized by the World Health Organization. For more information about the ISAM exam, visit the ISAM Web site.

Recently, two INVEST/Clinical Trials Network (CTN) Drug Abuse Research Fellows completed their 12-month postdoctoral fellowships, having acquired significant experience in conducting clinical trials and genotyping, respectively:

• Suzanne Nielsen, Ph.D., Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, Australia, spent her INVEST/CTN Fellowship with Walter L. Ling, M.D., University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), conducting secondary data analysis examining differences between prescription opioid and heroin users in two buprenorphine treatment studies, and supporting the multisite clinical trial “Cocaine Use Reduction With Buprenorphine” (CURB) study (CTN-0048). CURB is a complex protocol involving multiple medications designed to reduce cocaine use in cocaine-dependent individuals with a history of opioid abuse or dependence. Dr. Nielsen wrote the operations manual for the study, developed training materials, and helped run the national training for the study. She has completed two papers, presented her work at several scientific meetings, and served as guest editor of a special issue of Drug and Alcohol Review on pharmaceuticals. She will spend a second year at UCLA before returning to Australia to develop a network of clinical treatment providers in Australia, where multisite studies examining treatments for substance dependence do not currently exist. Dr. Nielsen also was featured in the ISAP News (July 2011, Volume 9, Issue 2), published by the University of California, Los Angeles Integrated Substance Abuse Programs.
• Meera Vaswani, Ph.D., All India Institute of Medical Sciences, spent her INVEST/CTN Fellowship with Wade Berrettini, M.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, identifying variants in known and novel mu-opioid receptor interacting proteins, genotyping eight genes for both opioid and cocaine addiction. Dr. Vaswani presented the work at several scientific meetings and completed two papers.