The 5th Annual Penn State Addiction Symposium

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Please join us on the evening of Monday, December 9, 2019, at a faculty dinner prior to The 5th Annual Penn State Addiction Symposium. This year our esteemed keynote speakers will be Yngvild Olsen, MD, and Joshua Sharfstein, MD, who will deliver the keynote address entitled “Doing More of What Works and Less of What Doesn’t—The Policy Challenge for the Opioid Epidemic.’

The dinner will be held from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. or so at the Hotel Hershey and will include representatives from local and state government, as well as prominent members of the Pennsylvania addiction treatment community. All interested faculty are invited, but registration is required (see below).

Dr. Olsen is an internist and medical director of the Institutes for Behavioral Resources, Inc, a comprehensive addiction treatment center in Baltimore City. She is the current vice president and former chair of Public Policy for the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Olsen consults with governments and healthcare organizations on implementing evidence-based clinical care programs for opioid use disorder. Dr. Sharfstein, also an internist, serves as vice dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement and professor of practice in health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the former health commissioner of Baltimore and has served as principal deputy commissioner of the U.S. Federal Drug Administration and as the health secretary of Maryland.

Drs. Olsen and Sharfstein are co-authors of the recently published The Opioid Epidemic—What Everyone Needs to Know (2019, Oxford University Press), which is already receiving praise from policy makers and leaders in the field. Thanks to the generosity of the authors, those attending the dinner and the first 100 to register for the symposium and physically attend will receive a free copy of the book.

The following day, Tuesday, December 10, 2019, the 5th Annual Penn State Addiction Symposium will be held in Junker Auditorium from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The goal of the symposium is to familiarize ourselves with the many groups studying and treating addiction at the various Penn State campuses and to consider this work within the context of the state and the nation.

Over the lunch hour (12:00-1:00 p.m.), the symposium will feature a second talk by Drs. Olsen and Sharfstein entitled, “Applying Science to Clinical Care—What it Really Means to Treat Addiction as a Chronic Illness,” focusing on their experience applying substance use research to patient treatment. Continuing Education Credits (CME, APA) for the keynote address for Penn State Hershey employees are currently being arranged.

During the symposium, we will learn about the breadth of preclinical and clinical addiction research going on at the various Penn State campuses. This year’s featured Penn State Faculty speaker, Yuval Silberman, PhD, assistant professor of neural & behavioral sciences, who will present “Stress Neurocircuitry and Addiction Across the Lifespan.”

The rest of the day will allow faculty members and clinician/scientists to share their current addiction-related research using brief 5-10 minute data blitz-style presentations, and students, post docs and faculty to share their research in a poster session.

If you are interested in presenting a 5-10 min data blitz-style TALK at the Symposium, the deadline for abstracts is October 14, 2019.To be considered for a talk, please send a 250 word (approx) abstract, complete with title, author(s), affiliations, and the presenter’s email address to Sarah Ballard (PSACT@pennstatehealth.psu.edu). The abstract will be printed in the program. Due to time limitations, presentations will be chosen according to relevance. Those chosen to present will be notified during the first week of November.

If you are interested in presenting a POSTER, the deadline for abstracts is October 14, 2019. To be considered for a poster presentation, please send a 250 word (approx) abstract, complete with title, author(s), affiliations, and the presenter’s email address to Sarah Ballard (PSACT@pennstatehealth.psu.edu). The abstract will be printed in the program. Posters will be chosen according merit and relevance. Those chosen to present will be notified during the first week of November.

Registration for the Symposium, Dinner, and Symposium Keynote address  and lunch only are ONLINE through EventBrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-penn-state-addiction-symposium-registration-63990884458.

Please register by December 3, 2019.

If you have any trouble with the online registration process, please contact Sarah for an alternative.

Please share this information with interested colleagues and encourage your students to attend and present their work!

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Addiction Symposium, please do not hesitate to contact Sarah Ballard (PSACT@pennstatehealth.psu.edu; 717-531-4214).