AUG/SEPT 2004
Volume 10 - No. 3
SRNT Newsletter
August/September 2004, Volume 10, Number 3
In the Spotlight
Each year at the end of the annual meeting, SRNT has a drawing for a free membership. Conference attendees are entered into the drawing by turning in their annual meeting evaluation forms after the conference. Please join us in congratulating this year's winner, Marie Cornelius, PhD! Dr. Cornelius is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health. She is also the Director of a post-doctoral training program in Alcohol Epidemiology Research. Her research interests are in the areas of prenatal substance exposure and the long-term effects on offspring physical and neurobehavioral outcomes. She has been prospectively following the offspring of pregnant teenagers for 15 years, and is currently examining the long-term effects of prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) on the now adolescent offspring's growth, cognition, and behavior. Dr. Cornelius has a particular interest in the etiological role of PTE on the development of regular and dependent smoking in the offspring and also its potential effect on the development of obesity in the offspring.
SRNT Member Belinda Borrelli, Ph.D. assumed the position of Associate Editor for the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in January, 2004.
The Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation (VTSF) has awarded a contract renewal for research on the causes and prevention of tobacco use by youth. A group headquartered at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, the Virginia Youth Tobacco Project (VYTP), will receive additional funding from the VTSF for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2004, which will allow researchers at VCU and five other Virginia universities to continue the comprehensive research program they began in 2002. To date, the VYTP has received over $4 million from the VTSF for research and evaluation activities. The scope of the VYTP effort is broad and includes study of the genetics of tobacco initiation and dependence, work on related behavioral pharmacology, clinical trials of prevention interventions, and epidemiological study of and outreach to populations of youth especially vulnerable to tobacco addiction. In addition, VYTP has formed a statewide coalition of researchers to encourage transdisciplinary collaboration and to pursue translation of research findings into science-based intervention practices. SRNT members who are involved with this initiative include: Bob Balster, Tom Eissenberg, Billy Martin, and Imad Damaj. For information on VYTP, see its website, www.vytp.vcu.edu. You may also contact VYTP executive director, Earl Dowdy, by email (eedowdy@vcu.edu) or by phone (804-827-0553). Look for a more detailed article on the activities of VYTP in the next issue of the SRNT newsletter!
The Rx for Change Tobacco Cessation Training Program for Students in the Health Professions: An Update on Dissemination Rx for Change: Clinician-Assisted Tobacco Cessation is a comprehensive tobacco cessation curriculum for health professional students. The program has been integrated into the required curriculum for all California schools of pharmacy (since 2000) and the UCSF medical (since 2001), dental (since 2002), and nursing schools (since 2004). To date, an estimated 3,900 health professional students in California have received the Rx for Change training.
In summer 2003, at total of 140 faculty members representing 75 schools of pharmacy across the United States convened in San Francisco to attend one of three Rx for Change train-the-trainer workshops. As of June 2004, 58 of these schools (65% of all 89 U.S. pharmacy schools) have implemented the program, reaching an estimated 6,100 pharmacy students during the 2003-04 academic year. With an additional 8 schools participating in the summer 2004 workshop, 93% of the U.S. schools will have at least one faculty member trained to provide comprehensive tobacco cessation instruction using the Rx for Change program.
The Rx for Change materials are available at no charge through the project web-site, at http://rxforchange.ucsf.edu. Dissemination is supported by NCI grant R25 CA 90720 to SRNT Members Karen Hudmon and Robin Corelli. Questions about the Rx for Change materials or the July 24-26, 2004 train-the-trainer workshop should be addressed to rxfc@itsa.ucsf.edu.