Administrative Core

The Administrative Core served vital functions of organization, training, and dissemination. This core organized senior scientists, early career scientists (including students), community partners, and advisory board members who came together in ways that actively promoted and supported synergy across the CPO. It included three research projects, a data science core, and a pilot & training core.

For example: early career scientists on each research project contributed to the science of that research project, while simultaneously received training in grant writing, project management, and science communication. They also received methodological training from the Data Science Core, gained leadership and administrative experience from Administrative Core committee membership, and strengthened community partnerships through consultations with the advisory board members and our community partners.

Dissemination of data, discoveries, interventions, and innovations from the research projects and pilots also fell under the scope of the Administrative Core.The investigative team built upon a foundation of over 30 federally-funded major research grants, comprising theory-based behavioral and neurobiological basic research, as well as efficacy, effectiveness, and implementation trials on issues related to drug abuse prevention and parenting.

Data Science Core

The CPO included a Data Science Core to leverage the complex, multidisciplinary data that was collected in the Center. It promoted streamlined access to and analyses by internal and external users. 

With overdose deaths, opioid misuse, and addiction sky-rocketing, the United States was facing a significant public health crisis. We were at a critical time in history to leverage tools in data science and sharing to help find solutions and address this problem.

The CPO's data-related activities were conducted in partnership with other national initiatives recently set in motion to address this crisis. Partners included NIH’s HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative, which was an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to this crisis.

In addition, we complemented the work of other national initiatives by incorporating common measures (e.g., NIH Toolbox, PhenX Toolkit, NIH’s ECHO common data elements), so data could be harmonized both within the CPO and with external data sets. This amplified the contributions of incoming data as well as the contributions of existing national and individual data resources. By taking these steps to increase the applicability of the data, the CPO hoped to increase the nation’s ability to address critical questions related to parenting among individuals who were opioid users.

Pilot and Training Core

A well-developed set of procedures for supporting pilot studies and other training was an essential part of the proposed research approach. These procedures stimulated novel research ideas and built upon findings from existing projects, expanding the breadth and depth of the existing knowledge base.

Such projects often served as starting points to research by generating feasibility and preliminary data for larger scale studies. They also furthered the aims of larger scale studies by expanding or applying findings to broader targets, populations, or behaviors. This provided the potential for new research projects.

Moreover, in implementation research, pilot studies were often essential to the uptake of a prevention or intervention program, allowing partners and consumers to gain familiarity with the program within a particular context. For early career scientists affiliated with the Center and those outside, pilot projects were an essential means of collecting preliminary data to launch an independent research career.