NIDA's Opportunities for Special Populations

Goals

NIDA's Special Populations Office (SPO) has two goals: to ensure that issues related to health disparities are adequately and appropriately represented in the extramural research program; and to increase the number of scholars from underrepresented populations - for example, cultural populations, women, and people with disabilities - participating in drug abuse research. SPO's programs for achieving these goals follow:

Special Populations Research Seminar Series

This series provides drug abuse grants development to individual minority and women researchers, in intensive one-on-one and small group sessions.

Minority Supplements

These supplements are research awards made to individual minority students and investigators who propose to work with current NIDA grantees.

Minority Institutions' Drug Abuse Research Program (MIDARP)

This program provides support to eligible minority and minority-serving institutions to increase their capacity to conduct drug abuse research. Research projects and institutional, faculty, and student development plans are the major components of the program.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative

Comprised of a number of different programs and activities, this initiative increases the interest and capacity of HBCUs to conduct drug abuse research and to prepare faculty and students to pursue drug abuse research careers.

Grant Writing and Proposal Development Assistance

New researchers can access grant writing tutorials and information on research design through www.theresearchassistant.com.

Summer Research with NIDA

This program introduces high school and undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to drug abuse research (biomedical and behavioral sciences) through research placements with NIDA grantees.

For more information on these programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov/SPO/SPOHome.html, call NIDA's Special Populations Office, at 301-443-0441, or write to 6001 Executive Blvd, Rm. 4205, MSC 9561, Bethesda, MD 20892.

Minority Recruitment and Training Program (MRTP)

This program is operated by NIDA's Intramural Research Program in Baltimore, MD. Among other activities, summer research placements with NIDA intramural scientists are available for students and faculty.

For more information on MRP, contact Dr. Jean Lud Cadet at 410-550-2732 or visit www.nida.nih.gov/DIR/brochure.html.