McLellan Named Robert Wood Johnson Foundation “Innovator Combating Substance Abuse”
July 2004
A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D., has spent most of his career researching the effectiveness and quality of substance abuse treatment, while working to reduce the stigma attached to addiction. After his own frustrating search for an effective substance abuse treatment for a family member, McLellan founded a research center -- Philadelphia’s Treatment Research Institute. Now, he will use funds from a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation “Innovators Combating Substance Abuse” award to develop health care policies that encourage doctors and other medical practitioners to look for and respond to symptoms of substance or alcohol abuse as complicating factors in common medical conditions and diseases.
Launched in January 2004,
McLellan’s PRISM project will provide research grants to NIH-funded,
career clinical researchers whose work is focused on any one of several chronic
diseases (currently breast cancer, hypertension, sleep disorders, diabetes)
to enable them to consider the effects of alcohol and/or other drugs in the
onset, course, management and outcomes of that chronic disease. Protocols
integrating medical, psychological, personal and social management will be
disseminated to health care providers. Ultimately, McLellan hopes to develop
a series of evidence-based clinical and administrative practices for adoption
by the medical community that will dramatically improve treatment standards
in both medicine and substance abuse.
“Too often, doctors, nurses and paraprofessionals are not trained to
detect symptoms of substance abuse that can exacerbate common ailments or
diseases,” says McLellan. “Our goal is to educate healthcare practitioners
to understand that co-existing problems of substance abuse can frustrate and
attenuate (and make more costly) medically prescribed regiments of care, and
to develop integrated plans for managing drug- or alcohol-involved patients
with other medical problems”.
McLellan and four others were named 2003 “Innovators” as part of a national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that rewards those who have made substantial, innovative contributions of national significance in the field of substance abuse. Each award includes a grant of $300,000, which is used to conduct a project over a period of up to three years that advances the field. The program addresses problems related to alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, through education, advocacy, treatment and policy research and reform at the national, state and local levels. The Innovators program is run by a national program office at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Dr. McLellan is co-founder and Executive Director of the Treatment Research Institute and Director of its Section on Substance Use and Healthcare where the PRISM project is housed.
For additional information on the Innovators Combating Substance Abuse program, please visit the Web site: www.SAInnovators.org.