Scientific Conferences and Workshops for the American Psychopathological Association - Each year, the Annual Scientific Conference and Workshop Program of the American Psychopathological Association is designed to provide bench science, clinical, and population health researchers with a high quality educational overview of specific timely topics regarding psychopathology defined to encompass alcohol, nicotine, and other drug use disorders and addictive processes. The meeting is open to all interested scientists and professionals with pertinent expertise, including ‘lived experience.’ Each annual program now features a thematically organized conference with evidence-grounded lectures by renowned experts as well as talks given by ‘rising stars.” Recent novel additions to the conference program include: (a) throughout the year, periodic invited webinar workshops on conference themes, covering both subject matter and methods issues; (b) poster sessions open to trainees, early stage investigators, and their mentors; (c) mentee-mentor matching and engagement processes. Invited conference speakers write chapters for a special edited volume published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry as a lasting dissemination monograph for future scholarship and research. This R13 proposal seeks to replace a successfully reviewed proposal for funding of APPA programs in 2024- 2026, then terminated on 20 March 2025 due to NIH policy priority changes. With offending elements removed, we now request support for the 2026 and 2027 APPA program with an initial two year ‘Phase 1” interval to replace the terminated award, and with a planned three year ‘Phase 2’ interval for programmatic support in years 2028-2030, as explained in our proposal. The Phase 1 conference-centered conference themes focus on ‘the affect revolution’ (2026; APPA President Maria Kovacs) and ‘family/work balance’ and other ‘occupational epidemiology’ facets of psychopathology and addiction research (2027: APPA President Jim Anthony). The Phase 2 programs include a 2028 focus on ‘population neuroscience and intersections of psychiatric epidemiology and brain research’ (APPA President Henning Tiemeier). Consistent with past APPA traditions, themes for 2029-30 will be chosen by APPA members when they elect future APPA Presidents who must propose a specific candidate-theme as part of APPA’s democratic election process. Maintaining a 115 year tradition, APPA can and will hold its conference-centered programs during 2026-2030 even without the proposed R13 funding. The main aim of this proposal is to enhance the participation and attendance of ‘the newest of the new’ psychopathology research workforce across the trainee-ESI spectrum. This aim will be accomplished by focusing essentially all of the requested funds on (a) travel awards for meritorious trainee-through-ESI applicants judged by an APPA Awards Committee, and (b) trainee-ESI- associated programmatic costs. Always with a reach from bench to bedside to community, the APPA conference promotes cross-fertilization and encourages accelerated translation of evidence toward implementation science, clinical practice, and public health tactics.
