The purpose of the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Consortium (SIRC) is to conduct multi-disciplinary community-based social work research on family and youth drug use prevention and services under two priority areas: 1) culturally-grounded drug use prevention, and 2) culturally responsive and resiliency-focused drug abuse services research. Our focus is the relationship between drug use and the strengths, competencies, and other protective factors buffering against drug use and risk processes of families and youth. We are also concerned with variations within the diverse communities of the Southwest in the relationship between drug use and ethnic, gender, developmental, geographic, and other social identity variables. We developed the structure of SIRC to be inclusive of and responsive to the research needs and priorities identified by community-based social workers, and to work in partnership with them throughout the research, dissemination, and skill building processes in a reciprocal manner. The consortium strengthens the institutional infrastructure of the School of Social Work by enhancing the capacity of its faculty members and social workers in the community to design, develop and implement drug abuse prevention and services research in partnership with the social work community outside the university and with colleagues from other disciplines within the University. This public health initiative follows the health promotion and disease prevention objectives of Healthy People 2000 (priority areas: 3, 4, 6, and 8) and the """"""""Initiative on Race and Health"""""""" of Healthy People 2010.
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