In his role as a member of the Board of Directors for the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), Marco Pravetoni, PhD, traveled to Washington, DC for CPDD’s 2024 Advocacy Day. He met with Congressional staff from the US House of Representatives and US Senate to discuss federal funding for substance use research, class-wide scheduling of fentanyl analogues, and his NIH-funded, UW-based research program. The Pravetoni Lab focuses on the development of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and pharmacotherapies for treating substance use disorders and preventing or reversing overdoses associated with exposure to a variety of opioids or opioids combined with stimulants. The group recently published a paper demonstrating that vaccines could be used to prevent the effects of drugs cocktails or street mixtures containing fentanyl, oxycodone, heroin, carfentanil, and methamphetamine in mice and rats.

John Fortney, PhD, will also make an appearance in Washington, DC to present at a Congressional Telehealth Briefing about his PCORI-funded SPIRIT Study that compared two telehealth approaches for treating complex psychiatric disorders in primary care. Congressional staff are eager to know more about PCORI’s funded telehealth work, and Dr. Fortney’s project is one of three PCORI chose to highlight.