Alcohol Intervention/Treatment Outcome Research Training

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The aim of our program is to train post-doctoral biomedical, behavioral, health care and other public health scientists to do research on treatment for alcohol abuse and alcoholism. An overarching goal is to enhance the critical scientific reasoning skills needed for our trainees to advance treatment research in alcohol abuse. From our perspective such research will benefit from interventions guided by sophisticated and fully developed theory using a multidisciplinary framework that includes the biological, psychological, social and cultural context in which interventions occur. While other institutional training programs may address treatment/early intervention research, this is the primary mission for this post-doctoral program. Distinctive features of our training program are: that it is interdisciplinary; that it embraces no single ideology or theory concerning the nature of dysfunctions related to alcohol or drug abuse; that it provides training at each level of intervention research; that it views prevention, early intervention and treatment along a continuum; and that it provides trainees with highly individualized opportunities to contribute to the knowledge base of alcohol/drug-related dysfunction and what to do about it. The training program for fellows is typically two years but on occasion we extend this training period for three years. The program accepts on average four new fellows per year. The training experience is structured to provide individualized research experience and training, complemented by a common academic curriculum to which 20% of fellows' training time is allocated. Four distinct areas are covered in the curriculum: (1) statistics/research methodology; (2) grantsmanship; (3) ethical issues in research; and (4) a two-year series of alcohol-specific seminars. The fellow's individual research training experience emerges from a plan developed by the fellow and agreed to by his/her mentors. The program has a primary emphasis on training in clinical trials with a secondary emphasis on the translation of clinical research into services research. The recent addition of neurobiology and behavioral genetics didactic and research experiences expands our focus of translational research from basic to clinical research in this upcoming cycle.