TRI Treatment Research Institute: Science Over Addiction

SENIOR TRI INVESTIGATORS AND ADMINISTRATORS

Section on Behavioral Interventions

Kimberly C. Kirby, Ph.D. is a psychologist with specialization in behavior analysis and behavioral pharmacology. She received her doctorate from the University of Kansas and completed postdoctoral training at Duke University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and on the Executive Committee for the division on Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse. She is also a full member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Association for Behavior Analysis. She has focused her research on behavioral treatments that improve motivation for recovery and addressed issues related to drug abuse and the family, and the involvement of religious communities in addiction recovery. She has more than 70 publications in professional books, meeting proceedings, and journals

Lois Benishek, Ph.D. is a licensed counseling psychologist. Her research involves counselor training, treatment fidelity, and the acceptability of adaptations of empirically-supported interventions by substance abuse treatment programs. She has a special interest in multicultural issues. Dr. Benishek is an experienced counselor and clinical supervisor who has a special interest in multicultural issues. She has also been employed as the director of Temple University’s masters-level counseling psychology program. Dr. Benishek has served on the editorial board of Journal of Counseling and Development and is presently a member of the Association for Women in Psychology Board of Directors/Implementation Collective.

MaryLouise Kerwin, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and a board certified behavior analyst with specialized experience in parent training, child maltreatment, and pediatric psychology. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Notre Dame and completed her clinical training at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/The Kennedy Krieger Institute. Her professional experience includes extensive training and experience in the design and delivery of behavioral treatments and interventions for pediatric problems. Kerwin is a recipient of a National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse awarded to the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine to fund training with Dr. Kimberly Kirby at the Treatment Research Institute. Through her three-year collaboration with TRI, Dr. Kerwin has developed expertise in the design and delivery of community reinforcement interventions for women with drug addiction and family members of individuals with drug and alcohol problems. In addition, she has been investigating the use of contingency management interventions delivered individually and in a group format. Dr. Kerwin is particularly interested in designing consumer friendly, evidence-based, behavioral treatments to improve parenting skills of mothers and fathers with drug addiction problems.

Clinical Trials Network

George Woody, M.D., Principal Investigator: Dr. Woody is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Following a long career in the mental health and substance abuse fields, his research began in 1971 at the Drug Dependence Treatment Unit of the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) and the University of Pennsylvania where his overall interest became the efficacy of psychosocial and pharmacological treatments for addiction; the relationship between drugs of abuse, psychiatric symptoms, and treatment outcome; and on risk factors for HIV infection among persons who abuse drugs and how risk can be reduced. He has been an active participant in projects evaluating naltrexone (in the U.S. and in Russia), psychotherapy and counseling for persons with cocaine dependence, and buprenorphine for treatment of heroin addiction. In 1999 he became the principal investigator of the Delaware Valley Node of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (CTN, and in 2003, received a Senior Scientist award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse to allow him to spend less time on clinical work and more on research. Dr. Woody’s numerous accomplishments and affiliations include authoring or co-authoring more than 200 publications and co-editing Treatment Improvement Protocols on methadone maintenance published by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. He helped develop Addiction Treatment Practice Guidelines for the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a member of research groups studying the abuse liability of tramadol and prescription opioids, and is a founding member of the Board of Addiction Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association.

A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator. Best known for his pioneering introduction of the Addiction Severity Index and Treatment Services Review in the 1980s, McLellan later conceptualized data-driven measurement of treatment effectiveness, performance-based monitoring, and analysis of the nation’s substance abuse treatment system as an “industry” beset with the same organizational, staffing and funding problems overcome in other problem-plagued industries. Through his research and extensive knowledge of substance abuse treatment systems, McLellan has become a persuasive proponent of the view that addiction is a chronically relapsing condition, one that must be continually monitored and managed. McLellan has published more than 400 articles and chapters on addiction research and serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. He serves on the editorial boards and as a reviewer of numerous medical and scientific journals, and is advisor to numerous government and nonprofit scientific organizations, including the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Research and Evaluation; the National Practice Laboratory of the American Psychiatric Association, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the World Health Organization, and the Greek government.Next page >>