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Shannon Gwin Mitchell, Ph.D. |
Second FRI Researcher to Receive NIH Stimulus Funding
Friends Research
Institute (FRI) was recently awarded a highly coveted
challenge research grant funded through the National
Institute on Drug Abuse from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009. The nearly $1,000,000 grant award
will support the work of ten research staff as well as the
work of three clinics in conducting the study.
This highly competitive award will be led by Dr. Shannon
Gwin Mitchell, a community psychologist and research
scientist at FRI. Dr. Mitchell has spent the last three
years leading the ethnographic component of a longitudinal
study examining factors affecting methadone treatment entry
and engagement. Prior to her work with FRI, she was at the
Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins
University where she conducted qualitative research for
several HIV risk reduction and peer support interventions
with injection drug users.
Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe, an internationally-known expert in
addictions, will work closely with Dr. Mitchell
on this newly funded study, which will compare the relative
effectiveness of intensive outpatient v. standard outpatient
counseling when combined with buprenorphine for
heroin-dependent African Americans. It will shed light on
the important question of what is the appropriate amount of
counseling to provide along with medication for opioid
addiction.
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Timothy W. Kinlock, Ph.D. |
FRI researcher among first to
receive NIH stimulus funding
A Friends Research Institute research
scientist,
Dr.
Timothy
Kinlock
is among the first in the nation to receive National
Institutes of Health stimulus funding through the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The two-year, approximately $1,000,000 grant
will support at least seven jobs and the research of
investigators in Baltimore who will be collaborating with
investigators nationwide to examine ways to improve access
to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for newly released
prisoners with histories of opioid addiction. The need for
access to MAT for newly-released inmates is particularly
urgent given that most such individuals do not receive drug
treatment during incarceration or upon release and typically
resume heroin use and criminal activity within one month of
re-entry to the community, increasing the risk for overdose
death, HIV infection, and re-incarceration. The recovery act
seeks to create or save more than 3.5 million jobs over the
next two years.
This study, funded by
the National Institute on Drug Abuse, will involve a
multidisciplinary team of researchers. The Principal
Investigator, Dr. Timothy Kinlock, a criminologist, is a
leading US researcher in the field of pharmacotherapy among
patients in the criminal justice system. He has studied
every approved medication for the treatment of opioid
dependence among prisoners or parolees and probationers,
including buprenorphine, LAAM, methadone, and naltrexone.
Dr. Michael Gordon,
a co-investigator, has worked closely with Dr. Kinlock since
1999, having served as Project Manager/Co-Investigator on
Dr. Kinlock’s study of prison-initiated methadone, the first
randomized clinical trial in the US of pre-release methadone
treatment. Dr.
Robert Schwartz, has collaborated with Drs. Kinlock and
Gordon on the above-mentioned investigations of opioid
agonist treatment among prisoners and recently completed a
NIDA-funded study showing the effectiveness of interim
methadone maintenance. The investigators have forged a
long-term working alliance with the Maryland Department of
Public Safety and Correctional Services and community
treatment providers to introduce and implement
pharmacological interventions into correctional settings and
programs for offenders with histories of opioid dependence.
Given the near absence of pharmacological treatment within
correctional institutions in the United States and the
substantial numbers of drug-dependent offenders entering and
leaving institutional settings, the presently proposed
research team can add significantly with regard to engaging
correctional settings in the adoption of medication-assisted
treatment.
Building on their past work, the
investigators will examine the impact of an established
implementation strategy linking correctional case managers
with MAT program counselors to improve access to MAT in the
community for newly released inmates. They will examine
whether MAT programs who use this enhanced strategy will
result in a greater percentage of treatment entry and
duration of treatment for newly released inmates compared to
MAT programs that do not use this strategy. The intervention
has the potential to reduce the risk to public safety and
health, and results of this study may be of practical value
to administrators and line staff of both correctional
institutions and drug abuse treatment programs and can be
used to overcome barriers to community treatment entry.
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