Addressing Substance Abuse and Comorbidities among Military Personnel, Veterans, and Their Families: A Research Agenda

There is growing concern that military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are experiencing a range of difficulties, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and alcohol and drug abuse.
What: The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, will convene a two-day meeting to address the issue of substance abuse and associated mental health problems among military personnel and their families, and will produce recommendations for new research directions and priorities.
Why:

The goals of the meeting are:

Gain an understanding of the intervention needs of military personnel, veterans, and their families regarding substance abuse and associated difficulties;

Discuss current prevention and treatment approaches being used with these populations and their evidence base;

Review existing efficacious prevention interventions and drug abuse treatments that may be appropriate for adapting and testing within military and veteran populations and their families;

Understand how to successfully conduct research in military and veteran settings; and

Formulate a research agenda for conducting addictions prevention and treatment research with military and veteran populations and their families.
When: January 6-7, 2009
Where: The meeting will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Bethesda, Maryland.
More Information A full agenda and speaker list is available at: http://www.sei2003.com/NIDA/1014036/index.htm

To register for the press briefing, please contact Dorie Hightower or Ann Benner in the NCI Press Office at 301-496-6641 or at ncipressofficers@mail.nih.gov.

Sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the meeting is organized in collaboration with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command, the Department of Defense Health Affairs, the Army Center for Substance Abuse Programs, the Department of Veteran Affairs, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The National Institute on Drug Abuse is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy and improve practice. Fact sheets on the health effects of drugs of abuse and information on NIDA research and other activities can be found on the NIDA home page at www.drugabuse.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation’s Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.