This resubmission application is for continued support of the Multidisciplinary Alcoholism Research Training program at the University of Michigan, now in its 23rd year of funding from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Since its initial funding in 1990, the program has trained 56 research fellows, including 46 postdoctoral fellows, of whom 10 are physician scientists, and 12 predoctoral fellows. In the next five years, the program will build on its previous success by concentrating on training four postdoctoral fellows, including one physician, per year. The University of Michigan Addiction Research Center (UMARC) in the Department of Psychiatry's Substance Abuse Section houses the training program, and has 22 faculty addiction researchers working on more than 35 projects, including over $4.2M in annual funding from NIAAA. UMARC research is focused in six areas: (1) Developmental Psychopathology and Genetics; (2) Prevention and Early Intervention; (3) Health Services Research; (4) Brain Function and Neurophysiology; (5) Treatment; and (6) Translational Research. UMARC has extensive collaborative relationships pertaining to alcohol-related research throughout the University, including faculty in the Schools of Public Health, Social Work, and Nursing, as well as other medical school departments such as Emergency Medicine, Pharmacology, and Genetics, all of whom may serve as mentors and enrich the multidisciplinary focus of training. In addition, UMARC supports a 12-year-old NIH/Fogarty International Center collaborative research training program for the improvement of addiction research infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland and Ukraine. A clinical addiction psychiatry fellowship program and addiction treatment clinic, which are co-located in the same facility as the NIAAA research training program, provide an opportunity for clinical exposure, observation, and subject recruitment for translational research fellows. An intense mentored research relationship, coupled with a graded set of research and didactic experiences, manuscript and grant writing, and clinical exposure for translational researchers, are the core elements of training. This revision addresses key issues that will both continue and increase the high quality and post-training productivity of program graduates. The PI and other key mentors have a long history of NIAAA-funded research, combined with other NIH funding, and mentorship that provide important opportunities for trainees to develop productive alcohol research careers.
Each year, problems related to alcohol consumption, abuse, and dependence cause 79,000 deaths and cost approximately $223.5 billion in the United States. Scientific research into the causes and prevention of alcohol-related problems across the lifespan, as well as treatment advances for individuals diagnosed with alcohol dependence is urgently needed to address these public health concerns. The purpose of this training grant application is to train and equip the next generation of scientific researchers who are interested in understanding and ameliorating the costs, causes, and consequences of alcohol-related problems.
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