Mentoring in Addiction Treatment Research

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Project Summary The primary goals of this K24 competing renewal application are to enable Eden Evins, M.D., M.P.H., to 1) conduct career development activities to enhance and extend her patient-oriented addiction research (POAR); and 2) provide intensive and high-quality mentorship to early-career investigators in POAR. A K24 renewal will to give Dr. Evins protected time to devote to career development to increase the impact of her clinical addiction research and to intensive mentoring of junior clinical researchers that would otherwise be spent on clinical and administrative duties. Dr. Evins, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Mass General Center for Addiction Medicine, has conducted POAR since 1999, emphasizing studies that integrate different treatment approaches, approach difficult to treat populations and influence clinical practice. Dr. Evins has accomplished the major goals of her initial K24 award. She has mentored over 35 junior investigators, many with K awards, has authored 100 publications, including 42 publications with a mentee as first author. She has conducted a series of studies that have changed clinical practice guidelines for smoking cessation for those with serious mental illness. Dr. Evins’ research plan for this renewal application includes continued work as a PI in NIDA funded treatment research, to serve as Co-Investigator on studies with mentees as PI. Further, she plans to submit proposals to 1) expand the scope of smoking cessation treatment for those with serious mental illness to the community, and 2) study effects of cannabis use on psychiatric symptoms, cognitive performance and addiction in those with psychiatric disorders and in adolescents. Dr. Evins’ mentoring plan includes training her mentees in 1) clinical aspects of drug abuse; 2) designing and implementing drug abuse research studies; 3) preparing scientific papers and presentations; 4) writing successful grant applications; and 5) responsible conduct of research. She will accomplish this with a combination of individual and group meetings; collaborative mentoring; role modeling; and integrating mentoring with the MGH Division of Clinical Research and the Office of Career Development. Dr. Evins’ career development plan involves increasing her expertise in multimodal and optical neuroimaging, assessment of effects of cannabis use in special populations; novel data analytic strategies; and genetics. These activities will both enhance Dr. Evins’ research and her mentoring capacity. The public health importance of this application is related to the need to develop new and effective treatments for drug dependent and dually diagnosed patients, and the need to train the next generation of investigators to develop the skills they require to effectively conduct POAR with this patient population.