Winhusen says the center will focus on three areas of addiction research: treatment development and testing, perinatal addiction and developmental consequences and population health and health services. These “cores” will be led by Andrew Norman, PhD, professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Physiology; Stephanie Merhar, MD, research associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics and a physician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; and Michael Lyons, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine at UC.
“The talents of these leaders will help us establish collaborative relationships within these three areas of investigation — not only across UC departments, colleges and centers, including those at Cincinnati Children’s, but also with community and governmental partners, other academic institutions and industry,” she says.
The center includes 27 faculty members who have all been involved in addiction research and have addiction-related publications in peer-reviewed journals. Currently, CAR investigators have over $22 million in research support from both federal and private sources, but Winhusen hopes that the collaborative nature of the center will lead to additional funding and the creation of a pilot funding mechanism to help researchers get the ball rolling on innovative studies.