Project

The SARET program will be an interdisciplinary collaboration between the NYU School of Medicine (Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, and Advanced Educational Systems Laboratory), NYU's College of Nursing, and NYU's College of Dentistry. Our collaboration brings to this initiative extensive experience in developing and evaluating innovative approaches to health professional education and in substance abuse research and training. Working closely with our research, education, and clinical partners (including a NIDA CTN node and Bellevue Hospital Center), we will develop, implement, and evaluate this innovative and engaging educational platform. The SARET program will be simple to update and revise, easily exportable to other health professional schools and training programs, and effective in increasing the number of physicians, nurses, and dentists who, stimulated by their participation in this initiative, will follow career paths that advance substance abuse-related clinical research. Despite the great toll substance abuse takes on society, the pace of discovery of new and effective prevention and treatment strategies is only modest, and major delays exist in translating such knowledge into improved population health. There is an urgent need to increase the number of health care professionals conducting clinically applicable research in substance abuse prevention and treatment. The goal of this grant, therefore, is to develop, implement, and evaluate a web-based curriculum, supplemented by mentored research opportunities, that will stimulate medical, nursing, and dental students to follow career paths that advance clinically-oriented research on substance abuse.