Title: Understanding the Determinants of Resilience in Biological, Adoptive and Foster Families Living With Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Project Details: The effects of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder on children and young people’s development and wellbeing can create significant challenges for families. While previous studies mostly focus on the deficits and difficulties experienced by families, there is emerging evidence that some families living with FASD are able to overcome these difficulties to enable children to thrive. However, little is known about the factors that facilitate such resilience. This doctoral study will examine the individual, family and contextual factors that promote positive family functioning in biological, adoptive, kinship and fostering families living with FASD. 

The Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth is seeking an academic Addiction Psychiatrist to join its faculty at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.

Addiction clinical service, teaching, and research is a strategic priority in our department and this faculty member will join an active high-quality service.

The role includes providing clinical care, teaching and training of medical students, residents, and addiction fellows and participating in plans and approaches to addressing addiction in the population across the service system of Dartmouth-Hitchcock.  

The purpose of this position is to coordinate and conduct research activities associated with the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM), which include a number of studies at the intersection of substance use, healthcare services and policies, and community engagement.

The Research Coordinator will conduct qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, assist in the management of projects including managing and tracking expenses, coordinate research dissemination activities, and conduct literature reviews under the supervision of the Program Manager and the Principal Investigator 

The Rutgers Brain Health Institute and the Department of Psychiatry are recruiting an outstanding physician-scientist as a tenure-track Professor of Psychiatry and to serve as the Director of the Treatment Research Unit (TRU), a key component of the newly created Rutgers University Addiction Research Center (RUARC). 

The ideal candidate will be a physician-scientist, adept at securing extramural funding to support translational research in substance use disorders. They will work with the Director of RUARC and lead a team to translate research findings to the clinic to improve substance use disorder policies and programs. 

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey is seeking a motivated Research Associate staff member for the Center for Tobacco Studies (CTS) within the School of Public Health.

The Research Associate will be responsible for the conduct of highly specialized and technical research in the area of tobacco and for assisting in the management of tobacco research studies, including design, analysis, and reporting.

How can public support be fostered for controversial, but evidence-based, drug policies that will improve outcomes for stigmatised and marginalised groups?

Project Description

The UK is currently facing some of the highest levels of deaths related to controlled drug use on record. People who use drugs (PWUD) also face other health and social harms related to their drug use, and because of the ways in which society chooses to respond to their drug use. We know that there are interventions and policies that might reduce some of these harms, but despite some promising evidence, these responses may not be implemented, or available to enough people to have an impact. There are many reasons for this, and not all are easy to resolve.
Drug policy and other public health scientists have argued that whilst important, public contribution to policy development and preferences can sometime be tokenistic, and valued only when it is in accordance with the broader political aims of government. Some important public health focused drug policies supported by health professionals and academics can also seem controversial and counter-intuitive to the public, and governments have also used this apparent lack of public support to justify inaction. However, policies that do have public interest and support, and lead to advocacy campaigns are sometimes quickly acted on. A good contrast here is the decision by the UK government to change the law to allow prescription of cannabis-based medicinal products in 2018, but ongoing resistance to change the law to permit the establishment of medically supervised drug consumption facilities in Scotland. 
Some of the reasons why the public may not support particular actions include a lack of familiarity with the aims and evidence underpinning a particular approach, or public attitudes towards PWUD. Public stigma is an important source of social exclusion and determines which policies and practices receive public support. Stigma can also affect the likelihood of PWUD to seek support, and undermine the benefits of treatment, and so this is important to address. We also know that some health and social care professionals can have stigmatising attitudes towards PWUD, and this can affect the level and quality of care provided, and may indirectly affect public opinion. Despite recognition of the importance of stigma on drug-related health and social outcomes, little research has examined techniques that might lead to more inclusive and less stigmatising attitudes towards PWUD. Similarly, although there has been good work in other health fields (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, HIV), there is a lack of work that has examined how public support for controversial, but evidence-based responses to illicit drug use can be fostered. 
We would like to work with a student who is committed to developing a high-quality programme of PhD research that responds to some of these important challenges. The student should generate the research ideas, but based on some of the work we have already done, areas of investigation might include: 

1. How framing of a) drug issues in public discourse (including the media), b) PWUD, and c) responses to drug use can affect public attitudes towards PWUD and public support for controversial policies. 
2. How the different ways in which evidence for controversial drug policies is presented can affect public support 
3. The role of mass media in shaping attitudes towards PWUD. In particular in the development of understanding media responses to drug-related ‘problems’, or in the development of evidence-based resources and training for journalists and other media producers to support their reporting.

This is an exciting and important area of work, with direct relevance to practice and policy. This is likely to be multidisciplinary research, and also presents opportunities to collaborate with professionals and partners outside of University settings. It is likely to appeal to students from a broad range of disciplines, including, but not limited to public health, psychology, sociology, criminology, health sciences, journalism, and marketing/communications. It is important that the prospective student shares our values of respect towards PWUD, and shares our commitment to undertaking research that seeks to support marginalised and stigmatised groups and to reduce health and social inequalities. 

We Are With You is a national charity that provides support to people who use alcohol and drugs, their family and carers. 

We Are With You are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated Team Leader to work and support in the management of our Wandsworth service.

You will support individual staff through providing management supervision and clinical skills supervision, as well as supporting with risk, safeguarding and quality assurance.

As well as supporting service users directly and deliver psychosocial interventions in a range of mediums including one to one and groups. 

• You will be qualified to an NVQ 3 or equivalent in Health and Social Care with experience of front line working in a busy Substance Misuse service.  
• Ideally, you will have experience of delivering front line management and supervision.
• You will have an interest in supporting other people to deliver high-quality services in line with the organisational strategy.
• You must have a strong understanding of performance, risk, safeguarding and quality, as well as experience of coaching and supporting others in these areas.  
• As well as have experience of high-quality psychosocial interventions and have a good understanding and experience of prescribing. 
   

The Mental Health and Addiction Research Group (MHARG) within the Department of Health Sciences is looking to appoint a Research Associate. You will be part of a growing global health research team working on applied health research projects focused on multimorbidity in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).

Role

• To conduct research under the supervision of senior colleagues and to contribute to the production of research
• To assist in the identification and development of potential areas of research and the development of proposals for independent or collaborative research projects
• To conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the literature to identify clusters of conditions causing multimorbidity burden in people with TB, and evidence-based interventions and care packages to address them.
• To contribute to secondary analysis of survey data
• To support establishing a global network of academics, policy makers and practitioners working on TB, co- and multi- morbidities to take forward further research in this area
• To write up research results and disseminate results through public engagement and outreach activities including organising and supporting workshops
• To assist with undergraduate teaching in own area of expertise

With this role you’ll be working as part of Southampton Drug and Alcohol Support Service.

The team supports people with their or their loved ones’ drug and/or alcohol issues.

No two days are the same and we treat every person who comes into our service as an individual, so being flexible, curious and a good listener are key.

You’ll have to record information about what you do, so enjoying a bit of paperwork and attention to detail is important. But most of the time you’ll be enjoying working with people from all backgrounds, making a difference to their lives.

The Alcohol Health Alliance has an exciting opportunity for an Administrative Assistant to join their team on a part time temporary basis, working 20 hours per week for a 12 month period. 

This is a great opportunity to work on one of the UK’s biggest health issues, gain insights in working on communications and advocacy for a charity, and to meet and build relationships with leading health organisations.

About the role

The Administrative Assistant will support the work of the Alliance by organising its key meetings, managing membership and public enquiries, supporting the membership subscription process and producing the AHA newsletter.  It is also an opportunity to support the AHA communications manager with social media and writing for the AHA website.

Working in this service you will have a direct and positive impact on improving the health, finances and wellbeing of the people of Manchester by supporting people to change their tobacco use and reducing intergenerational smoking habits– you can make a difference!

The service will be offered from community and health venues, offering flexibility and responsiveness to meet local needs and adapt to meet the needs of diverse populations. We are looking for driven, passionate and motivated people to help initially with the implementation of the new, exciting service and to mobilise the new contract in Manchester. Then you will work within a dynamic team to ensure that delivery of the service is responsive to the targeted groups and communities of Manchester.

To make a leading contribution to the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Social Policy and Health Inequalities (SPHI) project. Our main goal is to improve population health in Brazil by studying the social determinants of health and improving our understanding of how to reduce inequalities in low and middle-income countries.

Health inequalities exist within as well as between countries and are a priority for global health. The research utilises and enhances the 100 million cohort in Brazil to understand health inequalities in Brazil and evaluate social policies using a natural experiment approach. The 100 million cohort provides information on 114 million low-income people in Brazil, by bringing together administrative records on welfare benefits with health outcomes (including mortality and hospitalisations).

The post holder will conduct, manage and publish research in the area of Global health inequalities as well as assist in managing and directing this complex and challenging project. Specifically, the post holder will be responsible for investigating the potential biases arising as a result of incomplete recording of mortality and other health outcomes, as well as developing methods that could be implemented to address this bias.

And the post holder will work specifically on two main projects: Alcohol interventions to reduce alcohol harm in acute alcoholic liver disease project and the utility, acceptability and efficacy of wearable transdermal alcohol monitoring project.

To work on the NIHR funded Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London Alcohol Theme programme of research, led by Professor Colin Drummond. The post holder will work as part of a team on all aspects of the ARC Alcohol Theme research including literature reviewing, study design, preparation of ethics and governance documents, data collection, analyses, and dissemination.

The ARC Alcohol Theme aims to develop and evaluate optimal methods of implementation of alcohol interventions targeting harmful and dependent drinkers with physical and mental comorbidities.

There is evidence that exposure to unhealthy commodities (tobacco, alcohol and to a lesser extent foods high in fat, salt and sugar, HFSS) imagery in televised media causes young people to experiment with and become regular users of these unhealthy commodities, but the magnitude of the public health problem caused by this exposure, the drivers for inclusion and the most appropriate preventive policy responses remain uncertain. The post holder will support a programme of work on tobacco, alcohol and HFSS media content, building on our existing work in this area and extending to other forms of ‘new’ media including YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

The successful candidate will work with Dr. Rachael Murray and Dr. Alex Barker; coding media for alcohol, tobacco and junk food content so will, therefore, need to be IT literate, highly focussed and organised, with strong attention to detail.

Reporting to the Professor and Deputy Director of NDARC, as Research Fellow (Health Economics) must have significant interest & passion in applied Health Economics. You will demonstrate this through prior projects where you have undertaken cost-effectiveness and cost/benefit analysis. You will work on existing projects but will also be given to developing your own program within Drugs & Alcohol research. You will also be given the opportunity to supervise research students, in addition to contributing to research led by NDARC academics.

Responsibilities include:

• Provide advice on the design and analysis of economic evaluations, and communication of results to NDARC staff, students and key stakeholders.
• Conduct economic analyses of research data as required, and contribute to the design of new studies, particularly providing advice regarding different types of economic evaluations and economic analysis procedures.
• Undertake service activities to benefit the Centre, the University, the community and the profession, including co-primary and primary supervision of higher degree research candidates.
• Produce high quality research, suitable for publication in high quality outputs.
• Apply for research grants and contribute to the established research programs within the Centre and other related research centres.
• Perform other duties as requested by your supervisor.
• Cooperate with all health and safety policies and procedures of the university and take all reasonable care to ensure that your actions or omissions do not impact on the health and safety of yourself or others.

This PhD scholarship is related to a new ethnographic project funded by the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth). We are seeking an outstanding applicant with a strong track record of academic excellence in anthropology, sociology, gender studies or a relevant discipline (i.e. youth studies). 

The successful applicant will be required to undertake field research (participant observation, interviews, observation) involving work in the evening and on weekends.

This Scholarship is available to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian Permanent Residents only.

The Project will collect ethnographic and qualitative interview data to comprehensively investigate drinking cultures among nurses and lawyers. The Project aims to generate important new knowledge on the cultural and social practices that shape drinking among nurses and lawyers, and illuminate relations between drinking cultures and alcohol-related problems.

The University of Sheffield are seeking a Research Group Manager to contribute to research undertaken by the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group (SARG). This is a managerial role with scope to influence the strategic direction. The role will work closely with SARG’s management team to develop and deliver strategic objectives, evaluate collective actions, and will be responsible for the financial, operational, risk and administrative management of SARG’s activities, supported by the Research Administrator.

Applicants should have a good honours degree (or equivalent experience), and be able to demonstrate experience of managing large research programmes in higher education or another sector. Experience in building and proactively handling relationships within research teams and a range of partners including academics, data providers and policy makers is essential.

Applications close on 28 February 2020.

Contract Type: Fixed-term for 36 months, starting as soon as possible.

Working Pattern: Full-time

Faculty: Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health

Salary: Grade 7

£31,866 - £40,322 per annum. Potential to progress to £44,045 per annum through sustained exceptional contribution.