The purpose of this contract is to increase the participation of faculty, staff, and students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in drug abuse research through the establishment of regional centers for drug abuse research at HBCUs. These centers will provide research and research development activities for NIDA in its efforts to strengthen the capacity of HBCUs to competitively participate in NIDA and other sponsored drug abuse research programs. This contract has four objectives. They are to: l) Provide research development and training support to NIDA through the performance of various research and research development tasks to include planning and providing logistical support for meetings, preparing literature reviews and reports, analyzing data, and providing research experience; 2) strengthen the institutional environment that promotes and facilitates drug abuse research among faculty, staff and students, specifying both the institutional barriers to the conduct of drug abuse research and strategies to be used to alleviate the identified barriers; 3) develop collaborative drug abuse research relationships with other HBCUs and other researchers, particularly NIDA supported researchers; and 4) seek support for drug abuse research through participation in the competitive grant process at NIDA and other organizations.
