The National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance Abuse (NAPAFASA) in consultation with the NIDA AAPI Researcher and Scholar Workgroup proposes a series of conferences over a five-year period that will address substance use/abuse among AAPIs. Using a regional approach, the conferences will bring together researchers and service providers from the diverse AAPI sub-groups and geographic regions to build a national substance abuse research infrastructure for AAPIs.
The specific aims of the proposed series of conferences intend to: 1. establish a substance abuse research initiative that focuses on AAPIs; 2. encourage AAPI participation in career development programs with particular emphasis on the development of behavioral and social science researchers focusing on AAPI substance use/abuse; 3. establish a communication system amongst the researchers, service providers, and the AAPI communities to disseminate pertinent substance abuse research findings; 4. develop a mechanism for substance abuse research and data collection collaboration between AAPI behavioral and social scientists and AAPI community-based service organizations; and 5. disseminate substance abuse research information related to training, networking, and funding opportunities. The overall goals of the proposed series of conferences to be conducted over a five-year period are to: 1. develop substance abuse prevention and treatment research that is culturally competent; 2. develop methodologies that are appropriate for AAPI sub-groups that will be more targeted to the needs of these groups and contribute to the research methodology including a multicultural drug terminology lexicon that can be used in other studies with urban and semi-urban AAPI populations; 3. increase the numbers of AAPI research projects in the behavioral and social sciences by increasing the number of scientists with competence in AAPI substance abuse issues and AAPI community-based service providers with competence in research methodology, terminology, and practices; 4. establish a substance abuse services utilization database for AAPIs; and 5. establish data for the epidemiology of substance use/abuse in the AAPI populations.
