Research Training on Alcohol Etiology and Treatment

This renewal application requests 5 years of support for our Training Program on Alcohol Etiology and Treatment. This interdisciplinary training program was established in 2000 and designed to provide six postdoctoral trainees with both general and individualized research training on the etiology and treatment of alcohol problems. This renewal reduces the postdoctoral training program to four postdoctoral fellows to allow for the expansion of the program to now include four predoctoral trainees. The predoctoral trainees will be from four departments with strong alcohol research, psychology, community health and health behavior, social work, and pharmacology/toxicology. In addition to these disciplines, faculty also include representation of such diverse yet complementary fields such as sociology, epidemiology, psychiatry, nursing, and the psychobiological sciences (clinical neuroscience, applied biopsychology, behavioral neuroscience). Research training is conducted within the mentor's research program, as specified within Individual Training Programs (ITP) approved and monitored by the Steering Committee. With this diverse faculty, we are able to provide trainees with a broad, yet deep, foundation of knowledge regarding the biological, psychological, and social aspects of alcohol use and alcohol use disorders. The core curriculum includes: 1) a one credit (CHB 620— Special Topics) course each semester. The course includes seminars (e.g., Foundations of Interdisciplinary Alcohol Research, Seminal Articles in Alcohol studies), grant writing workshops, statistics workshops, professional development, and Training in the Responsible Conduct of Research. All of these seminars and workshops will rotate throughout the training to ensure that each trainee will have a chance to participate in all of the programming; 2) CRIA's seminar series and 3) formal didactic coursework identified in the ITP as important for research career progress. In addition to the core curriculum, there are a number of supplemental training opportunities, particularly through the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. In the past 15 years, 22 of the 29 (76%) trainees who have completed the program have continued research careers in academic positions with colleges/universities or have accepted assistant professor positions. Of the 20 with established academic positions, 15 (75%) have served as a PI or Co-I on an NIH research grant. During the period of their training, trainees who completed training in the past 10 years published an average of eight peer reviewed articles. All activities of the training grant are assessed and trainees who have completed training are contacted every two years to provide their