Contact PI/Project LeaderGOLDBACH, JEREMY THOMAS Other PIs
Awardee OrganizationWASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Description
Abstract Text
Project Summary / Abstract
The Brown School at Washington University, together with the School of Medicine, is seeking an additional five
years (years 21-26) of support for a pre-doctoral and post-doctoral research training program, called
Transdisciplinary Training in Addictions Research (TranSTAR). Funded since 2002, this program reflects an
integration of social work and medicine in the development of services to, treatment of, clinical correlates of and
policies that affect underserved minority (racial, ethnic, sexual and gender) populations and those particularly
vulnerable to substance use disorders and co-occurring and comorbid conditions. Maximizing an effective
transdisciplinary collaboration between the two schools, the program provides a stimulating and collaborative
research training environment to produce exceptionally well-trained addictions researchers. Organized into four
cores (Substance Use and Mental Health, Populations, Translational, and Methods), TranSTAR faculty are
particularly well-suited for addressing challenging addiction research topics (e.g., polydrug users, non-treatment
seeking, incarcerated populations, mental health/health comorbidities) and populations disproportionately
impacted by social determinants of health including poverty, racism and discrimination, housing and educational
inequality. TranSTAR holds a stellar training record: 100% of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral trainees who have
completed training in the most recent two funding cycles are addictions researchers, with excellent records of
publications and acquisition of funding. The record is similarly positive when the entire cohort of past trainees is
assessed. With a highly diverse training faculty, led by two faculty from social work/public health and psychiatry,
TranSTAR has demonstrated success in recruiting and retaining women and URM scholars; currently
predoctoral trainees are 67% women and 67% URM; diversity is also considerable among postdoctoral trainees
overall (58% women, 58% URM and other marginalized populations). Further, TranSTAR leverages successes
and "lessons learned" with on-going monitoring and evaluation to ensure that trainees (three pre- and two
postdocs/year) have the necessary knowledge and skills to: (1) conceptualize meaningful research questions
with practical service and policy implications; (2) execute rigorous, cutting-edge empirical studies; (3) develop
competitive grant applications suitable for NIDA and other NIH funding; and (4) translate and disseminate results
with potential for high impact. TranSTAR provides: (a) transdisciplinary and specialized substance misuse and
addictions coursework, workshops and seminars taught by leading faculty in social work, public health,
psychiatry, biostatistics, and the social sciences; (b) structured mentoring, advising, and "hands-on" experience
on addictions research projects for trainees; (c) proposal critique review sessions; (d) predoctoral teaching
assistantships in addictions, comorbidity, and other areas; (e) professional development sessions on
presentation skills, effective communication of research, and networking and effective collaborative team
science; (f) on-going training in rigor and reproducibility and in responsible conduct of research.
Public Health Relevance Statement
1. PROJECT NARRATIVE
Estimates from NIDA established that pre-pandemic costs associated with drug misuse and addiction, including
harms to individuals, families and society, exceeded $600 billion annually; these are likely to have increased
sharply during the pandemic, given the massive increase in opioid overdose deaths alone. Thus, the nation
needs a workforce equipped to impact the modifiable risk and protective factors for substance misuse and
addiction, particularly among vulnerable populations including racial, ethnic, sexual and gender minorities.
Through a mentoring team approach, TranSTAR aims to train future addictions researchers to work across
disciplinary boundaries, to produce translatable, rigorous and reproducible research that will inform services to,
treatment of, clinical correlates of and policies affecting populations vulnerable to substance use disorders and
co-occurring and comorbid conditions.
No Sub Projects information available for 5T32DA015035-22
Publications
Publications are associated with projects, but cannot be identified with any particular year of the project or fiscal year of funding. This is due to the continuous and cumulative nature of knowledge generation across the life of a project and the sometimes long and variable publishing timeline. Similarly, for multi-component projects, publications are associated with the parent core project and not with individual sub-projects.
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Patents
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Outcomes
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Clinical Studies
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