There is a dearth of child and adolescent psychiatric physician investigators committed to research careers. The lack of the child and adolescent psychiatrist's unique medical perspective of child and adolescent psychopathology and development leaves a significant gap in the research agenda. Both the Institute of Medicine and the NIMH have documented this need. This proposal helps to alleviate this problem by intensively training six additional academic child and adolescent psychiatrists in investigative skills to correct this extreme shortage of research faculty. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Physician Scientist Program in Substance Abuse represents a commitment to develop outstanding research and physician researchers focused on the role of substance abuse in child development and psychopathology. This program has five primary objectives: 1. To increase the number of child and adolescent psychiatrists participating in child developmental psychopathology and substance abuse research; 2. To identify child and adolescent psychiatrists suitable for research careers studying developmental psychopathology and substance abuse; 3. To expand the scope of current research training opportunities in child and adolescent psychiatry to include academic centers that have traditionally provided primarily clinical training; 4. To insure that the trainees in the program have sufficiently intensive training research experiences to increase the probability that they will become career investigators; 5. To utilize and develop a working group of outstanding child and adolescent psychiatric investigators who are committed to the shared goal of improving the current shortage of adequately trained child and adolescent psychiatric researchers through collaborative training experiences. By establishing mentoring relationships, this program will involve promising candidates in a collaborative training effort that will utilize the resources of the major child psychiatric and substance abuse research centers in the country. The program will include individualized, carefully structured research training that is monitored and evaluated by a supervisory committee of distinguished senior investigators. This evaluation will include annual reviews of all candidates, mentors and the sponsoring institutions and an annual external review to assure the professional development of the trainees and this research training program. Special emphasis will be placed on the recruitment of minority candidates and candidates from medical schools where strong research training opportunities are not available.
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