Mentoring in Drug Abuse and Dual Diagnosis Research

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is an application for a K24 Mid-Career Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research for Roger Weiss, M.D. Dr. Weiss is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Clinical Director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Program at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts. Dr. Weiss has devoted his career to patient-oriented drug abuse research. He has had continuous NIDA support since 1989, and has successfully mentored individuals who have become independent, nationally known investigators. His research has focused on the evaluation and treatment of 1) cocaine-dependent patients and 2) substance-dependent patients with co-occurring psychiatric illness. He has studied the integration of different models of treatment (i.e., psychiatric with substance abuse approaches, pharmacotherapy with behavioral therapy, professional treatment with self-help approaches) for drug-dependent and dually diagnosed patients. The primary aim of this award is to enable Dr. Weiss to expand his mentoring capacity while continuing to engage in this program of research. In recent years, Dr. Weiss has mentored an increasing number of junior investigators from McLean Hospital and elsewhere. Much of his current mentoring takes place in the context of his own projects. A K24 Award would enable him to 1) spend more time with his mentees; 2) mentor junior investigators outside the confines of his own projects, in the service of helping them to develop independent investigative careers in patient-oriented research; and 3) take on additional mentees that he currently cannot accommodate. Mentoring will take place in the context of three NIH-funded projects on which Dr. Weiss is Principal Investigator: 1) the NIDA Clinical Trials Network, in which he is PI of the Northern New England Node and Lead Investigator of a multi-site study of treatments for opioid analgesic dependence; 2) his NIDA-funded R01 study of group therapy for patients with bipolar disorder and substance dependence; and 3) the multi-site NIAAA COMBINE study, in which he is PI of the Harvard site. As part of the K24 Award, Dr. Weiss will receive additional training in the areas of 1) chronic pain, 2) brain imaging, and 3) statistics, which will simultaneously strengthen his own research skills and improve his mentoring abilities.