FRONTIERS IN ADDICTION RESEARCH AND PREGNANCY (FrARP), an annual research education program is intended for medical and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and clinical professionals, primarily from predominately underrepresented communities. This NIH sponsored research education program concentrates on a uniquely vulnerable population— pregnant addicts and their babies who suffer from drug withdrawal.

This NIH sponsored advanced training course provides skills development, hands-on laboratory research taught and mentored by addiction research leaders, and ongoing mentoring resulting in comprehensive, sophisticated training in clinical and translational strategies for addressing the current challenges in addiction during pregnancy and for designing better therapies for the future. The purpose of this training program is to address the public health challenges of having too few, and inadequately diverse, clinicians and clinical-researchers knowledgeable about both the currently difficult medical issues resulting from substance abuse during pregnancy and the encouraging strategies drawn from the basic research discoveries concerning addiction mechanisms which offer hope for improving treatments.

FrARP  brings the foremost leaders in substance abuse and addiction, pregnancy, NAS, and related biomedical fields together to first provide ‘hands-on’ laboratory-based research education and to offer one-on-one mentoring on scientific approaches and career development  strategies.  The course has formal and individual  career components ensuring that each participate is well versed in skills for designing, conducting, and publishing independent research, obtaining grants, and launching independent careers. These courses are offered at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA and San Diego State University in San Diego, CA.