The Social Science Research Institute’s Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction will host its seventh annual conference, in-person and via Zoom, on Monday, May 4 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Barron Innovation Hub at the University Park campus.
The all-day event is free, but all in-person and virtual attendees must register in advance. Breakfast and lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. The conference will have several panels, a poster session and a series of research talks from researchers, students and community members.
Proposal submissions for the poster session and research talks are open until Monday, March 30. and can be sent here.
The conference’s keynote speaker will be Traci C. Green, professor and director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University.
Green is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on drug use, opioid use disorder and drug-related injury. She earned a master of science degree in epidemiology and biostatistics from McGill University and a doctorate in epidemiology from Yale University. She helped design the ASI-MV, a real-time, illicit and prescription drug misuse surveillance system developed by Inflexxion Inc. Prior to joining the Heller School at Brandeis, she served as deputy director of the Boston Medical Center Injury Prevention Center, associate professor of emergency medicine and community health sciences at the Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. She co-directs the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Opioids and Overdose at Rhode Island Hospital and is an adjunct professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University and the Brown School of Public Health.
She helped co-found the website Prescribe to Prevent for prescribers and pharmacists, and its companion site Prevent-Protect for families, patients and community organizations. She presently oversees the community drug-checking resource Street Check and the Massachusetts Drug Supply Data Stream (MADDS), the first statewide drug checking program. She serves as an adviser to the Rhode Island Governor on addiction and overdose and consulted for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas on public health and public safety opportunities. She served on the board of cientific counselors for the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and two recent National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committees pertaining to opioid pain management, regulatory strategies to address opioids, and medications for opioid use disorder. Her research is supported by the CDC, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, the Department of Justice, and the RIZE Massachusetts Foundation.
Attendees interested in participating in the poster session or research talks sessions should submit a short abstract of 300-350 words about their poster or research talk presentation. The deadline for participating in the poster session and/or research talks is Monday, March 30. The Social Science Research Institute will cover the cost of poster printing; submissions can be sent here. Please note that you must still register for the conference here even if you apply for the poster session or research talks session.
Joel Segel, CSUA’s director and associate professor of health policy and administration, encouraged researchers, students and community members to attend this free and informative event.
“Anyone who shares our vision for solving the complex problems of substance use and addiction is welcome to join us,” Segel said.
Housed in the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), CSUA draws on the expertise of researchers, educators, and practitioners from across Penn State to develop and implement effective programs, policies and practices aimed at preventing and treating addiction and its spillover effects on children, families and communities. SSRI’s mission is to foster novel, interdisciplinary collaborations by investigators who aim to address critical human and social problems at the local, national, and international levels and to translate and disseminate this knowledge into measurable outcomes for human behavior, health and development.