Tobacco addiction, prevention focus of study
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is partnering with the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse on a five-year program to study new ways to stop tobacco use and fight tobacco's health effects.
The foundation's $14 million grant -- to be given over five years -- will compliment $14.5 million in grants already awarded to seven schools and universities by the NCI and NIDA. The two institutes will spend a combined $70 million over the next five years.
The money will be used to set up the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers, which will allow scientists in different research fields to work together. The collaboration will also enable scientists to look into areas that may not yet be completely understood -- such as adolescent smoking.
Each center will focus on different research themes, include culture, genetics and innovative treatments. Scientists will also look at preventing tobacco use, how it starts, and tobacco addiction.
Richard D. Klausner, M.D., director of NCI, says the centers will speed up development of tobacco intervention and get these programs to communities faster.
The centers' locations and research themes are:
The Brown University Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at the Miriam Hospital, Providence, R.I., will identify early childhood and lifetime psychiatric factors that determine smoking initiation, dependence, use patterns, cessation and cessation treatment responses;
The University of California at Irvine will identify predictors of nicotine addiction in animals and tobacco susceptibility and use in humans;
The University of Southern California at Los Angeles will work on preventing tobacco use among youth of diverse cultures;
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., will study identification of smoking initiation's bio-behavioral basis, smoking treatment and harm from tobacco exposure;
The University of Minnesota at Minneapolis will treat smokers who have been resistant to conventional methods of intervention, or who have not been previously targeted;
The University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison will work with those who have relapsed to tobacco use;
And Yale University in New Haven, Conn., will study tobacco addiction treatments.
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