Overview

The Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies (IDAS) was established at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 1993 to promote excellence in research and education on substance abuse. Currently, the Institute is comprised of over 40 faculty members from ten different departments within the university, thus enabling a multidisciplinary approach to addressing the complex problems associated with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.

With the efforts of VCU faculty and collaborations with other institutions focusing on alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse, IDAS has become a thriving research enterprise for VCU students and faculty, a national leader in addictions research, and a valuable resource to the commonwealth of Virginia.

IDAS faculty spans the disciplines of medicinal chemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, psychiatry, behavioral sciences, clinical and services research on community-based treatment and prevention. A major focus of the research is on the biological basis for the actions of drugs of abuse on the brain, where significant contributions have been made to the study of cocaine, opiates, marijuana, alcohol, hallucinogens, tobacco, inhalants and PCP. This research has been particularly valuable in providing the scientific basis for developing new drug abuse treatments. Other important areas of substance abuse research include the study of behavioral and genetic factors related to drug addiction, the evaluation of abuse liability of new medications, and the development and evaluation of new prevention and treatment models. IDAS faculty members have also made major contributions to the study of youth tobacco use and dependence.

This multidisciplinary focus has enabled VCU to become one of the leading universities in the world in attracting research support for studies of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. In FY 2005, IDAS faculty generated over $22 million in external funding from numerous federal, state and private sources. These funding sources included the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation.

Faculty

In addition to the large amount of sponsored research conducted by IDAS faculty members, they are widely recognized for their scholarly contributions to the field of substance abuse.

The director of IDAS, Dr. Robert Balster, serves as Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, and, during a typical year, faculty members publish over 85 books and scientific journal articles on drug and alcohol abuse. Four faculty members are past presidents of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, the longest standing organization in the United States addressing problems of drug abuse and dependence. Individual faculty members also have received numerous awards including three recipients of the Nathan B. Eddy Award for lifetime scientific achievement, an award for mentoring young addiction scientists, the Joseph Cochin Award for early career contributions and the Michael Morrison Award for service to the profession, all from the College on Problems for Drug Dependence.

Affiliations

The Institute is comprised of or is affiliated with several large research and knowledge-application efforts of national prominence, including a research center grant and a pre- and postdoctoral training grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. IDAS faculty have partnered with faculty from Johns Hopkins University to establish one of the first collaborating centers of NIDA’s Clinical Trials Network. This network of community-based treatment programs linked to regional universities conducts research on the effectiveness and feasibility of new science-based treatments for addictions. The Institute also serves as home to new faculty in the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Research Scholars Program. VCU hosts the Virginia Health Practitioners Intervention Program for assessment, treatment planning, referral and monitoring of impaired health practitioners in the commonwealth. Finally, the Institute is home to the Virginia Youth Tobacco Project, a statewide research effort addressing the causes and prevention of youth tobacco use, and it actively collaborates with the Mid-Atlantic Addictions Technology Transfer Center, also located at VCU. IDAS has strong ties to other institutes and centers at VCU, including the Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, the Institute for Women’s Health and the Massey Cancer Center, which share some of their faculty with us.

Key academic affiliations are with the VCU Division of Addiction Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, the VCU Department of Epidemiology and Community Health, the VCU Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and the VCU Department of Psychology. Each of these has joined with IDAS in the successful recruitment of leading scientists to VCU.