FOR RELEASE: Oct. 10, 2006
GALVESTON, Texas — The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston Center for Addiction Research and the Gulf Coast Center invites the public to a lecture by trailblazing researcher A. Thomas McLellan, who was among the first to call addiction a chronic illness.
McLellan will speak Oct. 19 from noon to 2 p.m. in UTMB’s Levin Hall Dining Room, on the corner of 10th and Market streets in Galveston. Continuing education credits will be offered, and reservations should be made by Oct. 13 with Ellie Hanley of the ADA Women’s Center at (409) 763-5516.
McLellan is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and founder and executive director of the Treatment Research Institute, a not-for-profit research and evaluation institute in Philadelphia. He is a renowned expert and innovator in the advancement of treatments for substance dependence, who created widely used measurement instruments such as the Addiction Severity Index and the Treatment Services Review.
His UTMB seminar will present the case for addiction as a chronic illness rather than an acute condition. He will review the onset, course, treatment and relapse rates for chronic conditions such as hypertension, asthma and diabetes, and suggest strong parallels between these conditions and the disease of addiction. McLellan will suggest significant changes in addiction treatment, emphasizing longer term monitoring and maintenance strategies as well as efforts to teach self-care.
The Center for Addiction Research was established in 2004 to coordinate translational research in addiction by creating opportunities for interdisciplinary investigation and training researchers in translational approaches.
The University of Texas Medical Branch
Public Affairs Office
301 University Boulevard, Suite 3.102
Galveston, Texas 77555-0144
www.utmb.edu