Historically, my career aims have been to improve upon treatments/ treatment access for substance use disorder as well as generally facilitate research in addiction and beyond. As a trained behavioral pharmacologist, I have had continuous NIH funding since 1993 conducting translational research in addiction, including human laboratory and clinical trials, with a focus on psychostimulant and/or opioid use disorders. In 1996 during my tenure at Yale School of Medicine, I established and directed the Outpatient Treatment Research Program at the West Haven CT Veterans Administration Healthcare System (VAHCS) that administratively involved three institutions (Yale, VAHCS, APT Foundation) to ensure the successful conduct of several medications development human laboratory and clinical trials. In 1998 I became Scientific Director of the NIDA P50 medications development center (T. Kosten, PI) and was responsible for coordinating the mentoring of physician scientists and fellows, overseeing research staff, and consolidating resources to maximize research productivity. When I accepted a faculty position at UAMS in 2004, I moved my research and established an addiction research program in the department of Psychiatry and became Vice Chair for Research in Psychiatry at UAMS. I have been responsible for intramural and extramural grant funding, overseeing the career development of clinician scientists, and establishing a research track for Psychiatry residents. I served in several leadership roles on campus, including in our CTSA-funded Translational Research Institute from 2014-2017. I directed the UAMS CTSA-supported Clinical Trials Unit, transforming culture and processes to maximize efficient, regulatory-compliant and rigorous conduct of multi-site trials. I became Director of Psychiatry's Center for Addiction Research in 2016 and have focused on strategic recruitment of addiction scientists as well as developing synergy among CAR/UAMS faculty. In 2020, I became the UAMS site principal investigator in the NIDA Clinical Trials Network Big/SouthWest Node and am awaiting funding on a NIDA CTN multi-site trial. Meanwhile, my focus has shifted to include drug prevention strategies and am currently leading the Arkansas State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup in partnership with state agencies, gathering, analyzing and disseminating trends in substance abuse and related outcomes in order to inform prevention efforts across the state.

Member. Society for Scientific Exploration
Fellow, College on Problems of Drug Dependence
Member, Society for Shamanic Practice

Director. Center for Addiction Research, UAMS Department of Psychiatry

Research Director. UAMS Substance Abuse Treatment Clinic/Center for Addiction Services and Treatment

Team Leader. Arkansas Statewide Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup

Chair. Dissemination and Publication Committee. NIDA CTN Big South/West Node

A behavioral pharmacologist by training, I have been a funded NIH researcher for over four decades, conducting translational research focused mainly on opioid and/or stimulant use disorders. Much of my work has focused on developing human laboratory and clinical trial study designs that serve as models for studying efficacious treatments. For instance, I participated in the development and testing of a methodological advance in human drug discrimination procedures (novel-response option) and applied this methodological advance to a human laboratory model of opioid withdrawal, through which two nonopioid compounds were identified as potential opioid withdrawal treatments. Moreover, my Yale colleague, Dr. Patrick O’Connor, and I piloted the first trial of office-based buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder. In addition, I developed in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Kosten a relapse paradigm for stimulant use disorder trials and identified the SSRI sertraline as a potentially efficacious relapse prevention treatment. I also mentored Dr. Michael Mancino (UAMS) on the development of a rigorous amphetamine withdrawal paradigm for his COBRE project (PI: Garcia-Rill) and Dr. Michael Wilson (UAMS) on developing a human laboratory model of “agitation”, which often occurs among methamphetamine users presenting to the ED. I am currently leading the Arkansas Statewide Epidemiology Outcomes Workgroup, monitoring substance use trends and related outcomes to help guide successful substance use prevention efforts in the state. Along these lines, I have been working with Dr. Ronald Thompson (UAMS) on developing and testing the efficacy of an adolescent game-based nonmusical prescription drug use prevention intervention along with a caregiver educational component. Meanwhile, I have returned to my behavioral pharmacology roots, piloting the effects of cannabis in older adults.

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