In alignment with RFA-DA-19-008, this application seeks to establish the Great Lakes Node (GLN) of the NIDA-supported Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (CTN). This node will draw on an experienced set of investigators who have active collaborations and represent all of the major academic medical centers in the Greater Chicago and Wisconsin areas. The node will serve as a vital Midwestern hub for the CTN and will expand on the success of the CTN approach. In addition, the GLN will bring substantial experience in adolescent/young adult research, seniors/aging research, digital & mobile technologies, opioid misuse, collaborative care/population health, telehealth, and electronic health record and systems-driven interventions and research methodologies. The GLN will support engagement with CTN protocols and also add the following:
Aim 1 : GLN will identify and recommend substance misuse research and intervention protocols focused on systems-based practice using hospital-based screening, collaborative care, and population approaches.
Aim 2 : We will establish a digital and computation health core that will leverage our expertise in these domains and serve as a conduit for studies in mHealth, eHealth, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and telehealth interventions.
Aim 3 : Our node will bring substantial expertise with youth/adolescent health and seniors/aging that will enable us to recommend studies to the CTN that examine the genesis of substance misuse and the potential for prevention strategies to mitigate these life-course pathways.
Aim 4 : In alignment with our team?s expertise, we plan to support work on substance and opioid misuse that focuses on health disparities including socioeconomic, geographic, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Aim 5 : Leveraging our experience in professional education and practice-based learning, our node will rigorously test the impact of professional education on opioid and substance treatment. We have built on the ECHO model to develop methods to conduct high-quality distance education and supported training that are currently being trialed in Illinois with plans to expand these programs nationally.
Aim 6 : GLN will expand the pipeline of early investigators interested in substance misuse research. We will align this part of our program with our very successful CTSA-supported programs and build specific subprogramming that supports addiction and substance misuse research, training, and mentorship.
This application will establish the Great Lakes Node of the Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network. The creation of this node will help facilitate research on substance and opioid misuse which are key components of NIH and federal government strategy to reduce the mortality and morbidity associated with the current opioid and substance epidemics. This node will support clinical trials relevant to the epidemics and also advance research in novel models of care, data analytics, mobile interventions and training.
