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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.
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