The overall goal of the proposed California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) Diversity-promoting Drug Abuse Research Program (DIDARP) is to increase the quality and quantity of research on the CSUSB campus focused on drug abuse and addiction, particularly as it pertains to late childhood and adolescence. To this end, the goals of the proposed program are to enhance the capacity of CSUSB faculty to engage in meaningful and fundable research in drug abuse and addiction and to increase the number of disadvantaged students that pursue a career in drug abuse research. CSUSB is ideally suited to carry out these goals because it has a core of active faculty members interested in developmental aspects of drug abuse, a large number of academically qualified and motivated disadvantaged students, and a supportive administration. The CSUSB DIDARP program has a number of activities proposed to achieve the aim of expanding the drug abuse and addiction research program on campus. These activities include providing research funding and statistical advisement to faculty, the development of a bimonthly seminar on drug addiction research, and a biweekly journal club. In addition, two research projects from faculty in the departments of Health and Human Ecology and Psychology are being proposed.
The proposed project will increase our understanding of the causes and consequences of eariy illicit drug use and increase the number of economically disadvantaged students who undertake research careers in drug abuse and addiction.
