This application is a competing renewal requesting five years of support for annual meetings of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatrist (AAAP). The AAAP Annual Scientific Meeting and Symposium provides a unique forum for dissemination of state-of-the-art information to physicians and other practicing clinicians in the addictions area. The AAAP meeting attendance has been 325-350 in recent years and the meeting provides an ideal setting for networking, mentoring and building collaboration. The annual meeting is designed to present the latest findings from basic and clinical research as well as policy-related information in the field of addictions to a broad array of health care providers. In addition to providing the forum for information dissemination through a variety of mechanisms (symposia, workshops, case conferences, etc.), the meeting provides the organizational backdrop for the exchange of ideas, discussion and working groups focused on other AAAP educational and policy-based activities. For the last five years, the AAAP Annual Scientific Meeting and Symposium has received support from NIDA which has been critical to improving and expanding the meeting. As a result of NIDA funding, conference proceedings were first produced after the 1998 meeting. The response to these has been overwhelmingly favorable from both conference attendees and individuals unable to attend the conference who requested a copy of the Proceedings for reference purposes. In order to make the proceedings more accessible and affordable, they are now available to all participants on CD roms. During the last three years, AAAP has incorporated a symposium highlighting findings from NIDA's Clinical Trials Network (CTN) as a part of the annual meeting. The AAAP meeting provides an important forum for dissemination of the results of CTN studies to the practicing community. The CTN Symposium has been a well attended and important part of the annual meeting for the past three years and we will continue the yearly CTN update during the renewal period. Also described in this application are plans for other symposia, workshops, and mentoring activities that will be part of the annual meetings during the period of support requested. The AAAP Annual Meeting and Symposia has benefited greatly from ongoing NIDA support. We hope to continue to work together with NIDA to provide state-of-the-art information about evidence-based treatments to the addictions treatment community.
