Bridging the gap between research and clinical practice

Virginia Commonwealth University recently celebrated a research partnership with the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division that has helped change and shape the quality of drug addiction treatment and recovery services in the Richmond area.

During a ceremony on May 12, Ned Snead, program director for the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division, and program staff members were honored with a plaque for their commitment to improving outcomes for substance use patients in the surrounding area by integrating evidence-based practices into “real life” drug-abuse treatment.

Snead and his team have been involved with three National Institutes of Health, multi-site national studies on a variety of topics, the latest of which featured HIV counseling and testing for individuals with alcohol and other drug problems.

For more than a decade, the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division has had a partnership with researchers from across VCU’s campuses and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Together, they have been able to take the knowledge gained from a variety of collaborative research projects and apply the findings to the standard practice at the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division.

The research is supported by the Clinical Trials Network through the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Faculty from the VCU School of Medicine, the VCU Colleges of Humanities and Sciences and the VCU School of Social Work contributed to the Mid-Atlantic Node of the Clinical Trials Network. Additional support has come from the VCU Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, the VCU AWHARE Program or Addiction and Women’s Health: Advancing Research and Evaluation, and the Addiction Technology Transfer Center.

Awards ceremony presenters included Dace Svikis, Ph.D., principal investigator for the VCU portion of the grant; John Clore, M.D., associate vice president for Clinical Research at VCU; and Roy Pickens, M.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry.