The School of Social Work has become the third social work program in the country to be funded as part of a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) initiative to stimulate the development of federally funded social work research on substance abuse.

The university joins two other top-10-ranked programs at Washington University in St. Louis and Columbia University, said Barbara W. White, dean of the School of Social Work.

The Substance Abuse Research Development Program will focus specifically on substance abuse among under served populations (particularly African Americans and Mexican Americans) and will emphasize factors at the individual, family, organizational, societal and cultural levels that influence substance abuse and substance abuse treatment.

The five-year, $2 million Research Development Program will involve both research and training activities to develop substance abuse research among faculty and students in the School of Social Work and related disciplines.

In addition to this newly funded initiative from NIDA, three other federal grants totaling $4.3 million were awarded as follows:

• Research grant from NIDA to study the normalization of heroin as a "club drug."
• Research grant from NIDA to study drug problems on the U.S./Mexico border.
• Technology transfer grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Servces Administration to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice in the addictions field.

Research Scientist Richard Spence is the principal investigator of these three grants.