Enhancing the Impact and Sustainability of Substance Use Prevention and Services Research in Systems: Insights from NIDA Principal Investigators on Partnership Building

This roundtable brings together principal investigators from four NIDA center grants and cooperative awards whose substance use prevention and service research relies heavily on sustained research-practice-policy partnerships. This discussion is hosted by the NIDA’s Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research which administers these grants as well as a wide variety of extramural research in this arena. Discussants will be able to share experiences working in a wide variety of settings ranging from juvenile justice to the child welfare systems while providing practical insights throughout the science pipeline—from initiating a cooperative agreement to working with established federal, state and local systems to diffuse prevention implementation methodologies. Our goal is to have a facilitated dialogue on two core themes: (a) sharing the challenges of forming and sustaining research-practice-policy partnerships over time and identifying possible solutions and (b) how to ensure the highest policy and public health impacts from the research collaboration that enhance local, state and/or national health and well-being goals. By examining the role of research-practice-policy partnerships in optimizing substance use prevention science, we hope to encourage a learning collaboratory during this roundtable session.