I'm writing this from the Minneapolis airport, awaiting my flight home from the APA convention. It was great to spend the last 4 days talking with so many of you. For those unable to attend in person, Division 28 was very well represented at the meeting and had some truly outstanding programming.
As is tradition, we began the meeting by recognizing our award winners, Cassie Boness, Lorenz Neuwirth, and John Roll as well as out new fellows, Mickey Koffarnus and Rob Leeman. Congrats again to each of you.
Div 28 member Adam Levinthal was also honored with the APF Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology. Dr. Levinthal was recognized for his research on youth tobacco use and vaping and service on several key advisory panels related to tobacco regulation. This is a very well-deserved honor!
A key update from the Division 28 Executive Committee meeting is that there was a vote to make a couple slight changes to the name of the division. In the coming week or two, I will file a petition to APA Council to request that the division be renamed to "Society for Psychopharmacology and Substance Use." This is the culmination of work that began under the leadership of Kelly Dunn as part of her 5-year strategic plan. The desire to adopt "society" in the name is to better convey the independence that the division has from APA (for example, many people I have spoken to recently were not aware that you can be a member of the division without being a member of APA). This also has broader brand appeal and is something that many other divisions of APA have adopted recently. The change from substance misuse to substance use stems from the increasing perception of "misuse" as being somewhat pejorative, and the increasing engagement of division members in research that is not related to misuse, but rather therapeutic use. This includes work targeting new applications of substances like cannabinoids, ketamine, and psychedelics.
I also want to take a moment to give a very big thank you to Jake Borodovsky for his outstanding service to the division as program chair and to Andrea Vasquez Ferreiro and Madison Murray for the work they did in organizing a wonderful ECPO social hour.
Hope everyone has a great wrap up to their summer and I am already excited for next years' convention in Washington DC.
Regards,
-Ryan
________________
Ryan Vandrey, Ph.D.
President
APA Division 28
http://www.apadivisions.org/division-28/index.aspx
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