The STARR News: August 2022 |
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August is
Overdose Awareness Month
August is Overdose Awareness Month, capped by International Overdose Awareness Day, which takes place annually on August 31st.
Overdose Awareness Month is the time to raise awareness of substance use disorders, combat the stigma that is attached to those disorders, promote treatment and celebrate recovery, and strengthen efforts to prevent overdose deaths.
August 31st marks Overdose Awareness Day, a global event to acknowledge the grief felt by families and friends, and remember those who have died or had a permanent injury due to a drug overdose.
Overdose Awareness Month spreads the message that the tragedy of overdose death is preventable.
What can we do to support Overdose Awareness?
- Encourage participation in Overdose Awareness events.
- Share information about the issue of fatal and non-fatal overdose.
- Send the message to current and former people who use drugs that they are valued.
- Stimulate discussion about overdose prevention and drug policy.
- Provide basic information on the range of available support services.
- Inform those around you about the risk of overdose.
We can all take action to address the overdose epidemic and enhance our support for individuals facing substance use disorder so that we can save lives.
Find more information and resources HERE and HERE.
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Project RockSTARR Advocacy Ace Awards
The RockSTARR Advocacy Ace Awards are given to individuals whose screened volunteers have designated the most donations to their local advocacy organizations. We'll feature our Advocacy Aces throughout the year.
This month, we're delighted to spotlight Erzie Nagy of Woodstock Research Center, who raised $650 in donations for their local NAMI affiliate through the RockSTARR program. The check will be delivered to the site to take to the local NAMI office to help build that relationship.
Thanks for your great work, Erzie!
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Project RockSTARR is a donation program that puts sponsors' advocacy support to work building relationships between advocacy and research at the local level, and supporting community efforts to help those living with mental illnesses. |
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The RockSTARR program is simple: when a volunteer screens for a study, they are given information about the advocacy organizations and resources within their community. At that moment, the volunteer is given the opportunity to allocate a donation (provided by the Sponsor) to a local advocacy group.
This is a great way to empower volunteers to give back to their community and for the sponsor to support the volunteer beyond their research participation.
Contact us today to discuss how you can incorporate a RockSTARR program into an ongoing or upcoming study!
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This month's STARR Podcast Spotlights
Johanna Kandel,
Founder and CEO, The National Alliance for Eating Disorders
In this episode, we introduce Johanna Kandel, founder and CEO of The National Alliance for Eating Disorders, who joins host Mallory Mercer to discuss how she came to found The National Alliance for Eating Disorders and shed light on why the research into eating disorders is so important.
Johanna lends an insightful perspective on eating disorders and offers options on helping individuals struggling with these disorders. Meet Johanna on this month's featured podcast HERE.
For this and all of the STARR Podcasts, you can find the STARR Podcast archive HERE.
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Update on the 988 Lifeline
Accessing 988 Lifeline is purposely simple—as easy as dialing or texting 9-8-8. From there, callers are routed to a trained crisis counselor local to their area code who is part of the Lifeline network, ensuring that the growing number of people in crisis can get appropriate and more equitable access to mental health services – and that our broader emergency response infrastructure (which includes 911, emergency medical services and law enforcement) can guide people to the right places, at the right times.
Vibrant Emotional Health is the NY-based nonprofit that runs the 988 Lifeline. Their spokesperson Dante J. Worth wrote, “As expected, volume over the transition week increased substantially.” While Worth noted that full data for July would not be available until August, he did include some partial information about the increase in calls, specifically “Over the period Thursday, July 14-Wednesday, July 20 (transition week), the Lifeline received over 96,000 calls, text, and chats. This is in comparison to over 66,000 the week before. This is an approximately 45% increase in volume between the transition week and the previous week. It is an approximately 66% increase in volume compared to the same week in 2021.”
988 Partner Toolkit
SAMHSA recognizes the need for governments, states, crisis centers, and partners to speak with one voice to ensure there is a clear understanding about what 988 is and how it will work. They have developed a 988 Partner Toolkit and encourage everyone to use the key messages, templates, social media posts, and printed materials.
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Back to School:
The Jed Foundation
One way to support students heading back to school is to make sure that they have the mental health resources for their peers and for themselves.
That's where The Jed Foundation comes in. JED is a nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide for our nation’s teens and young adults, giving them the skills and support they need to thrive today…and tomorrow.
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For students, their school community is a critical part of their support network and emotional safety net. JED works directly with high schools, colleges, and universities representing millions of students to put systems, programs, and policies in place to create a culture of caring that protects student mental health, builds life skills, and makes it more likely students will seek help and struggling students will be recognized, connected to mental health care, and supported.
JED has three programs that support student mental health in schools:
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JED Campus, a four-year strategic partnership that guides colleges and universities through a collaborative process of comprehensive systems, program, and policy development with customized support to build upon existing efforts to address student mental health, substance misuse, and suicide prevention.
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JED Campus Fundamentals, a shorter, 18-month evidence-based program adapted from JED Campus offers colleges and universities a lighter-touch engagement. Schools have the option to add extra items a la carte or sign on for the four-year program.
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JED High School (ninth through 12th grade), an 18- to 24-month program created to specifically address the mental health needs and social development of adolescents and teens and is tailored to the high school environment. In partnership with JED, school leaders will assemble an interdisciplinary team to create, assess, and strengthen policies, programs, and systems to support student mental health, reduce substance misuse, and prevent suicide.
Check out the JED website for the full list of their resources and programs for students: The Jed Foundation
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2022 Rally for Medical Research -- Join advocates from around the country for the 2022 Rally for Medical Research! The Hill Day will take place on Wednesday, September 14, with advocates meeting their congressional representatives and staff. The evening before, on September 13, join us for a reception to celebrate medical research with all partners and participants. Together, we will continue to call on our nation’s policymakers to make funding for NIH a national priority and raise awareness about the importance of continued investment in medical research that leads to MORE PROGRESS, MORE HOPE and MORE LIVES SAVED. Learn more here.
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The Site Solutions Summit is being held October 7-9, 2022 in Hollywood, Florida. Organized by the Society for Clinical Research Site (SCRS), the Site Solutions Summit provides a unique hub where sites, sponsors, CRO executives, and regulators come together to discuss best practices and ideas while developing strategic partnerships through ideation sessions, workshops, and focus groups. Learn more here.
ASCP Psychopharmacology Update: State-of-the-Art Fall Meeting
The virtual meeting is being held October 15-16, 2022, with a program designed to provide state-of-the-art education on new developments in psychopharmacology for psychiatrists and other professionals already knowledgeable about the pharmacologic treatment of psychiatric disorders. The goal is to have the participants better assess patients in need of psychopharmacologic intervention and properly administer state-of-the-art treatment. Learn more here.
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The 147th Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association (ANA2022) will be held in Chicago October 22 - 25, 2022. Registration is now open. Additionally, the Research Careers Reimagined Course Planning Subcommittee, is offering a Research Careers Reimagined Course (RCR), which is taking the place of the prior Translational and Clinical Research Course (TCRC). Learn more here.
Neuroscience 2022 will be held in-person in San Diego, CA, November 12-16. SfN will also offer a sampling of annual meeting content virtually, including the opportunity for virtual posters. Each year, scientists from around the world congregate to discover new ideas, share their research, and experience the best the field has to offer. Find more information here.
CNS Summit 2022 will be held November 17-20 at The Boca Raton Resort. Founded in 2009 by R&D leaders in Life Sciences, CNS Summit was created to advance clinical development, with a focus on innovation, collaboration and technology. Find more information here.
The ADAA 2023 Conference will be held on April 13-16, 2023, in Washington, DC at the Renaissance Washington, Downtown DC. The theme for the conference is From Science and Technology to Evidence-Based Practice: Enhancing Access Through Integration. Submissions for Symposia, Roundtable, and Workshop open August 15, 2022 and deadline is October 11, 2022. For more information, click here.
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These results now make it a total of two separate clinical studies that showed efficacy for KarXT for the treatment of schizophrenia (the results of the other were published last year). This is important for two reasons. First is that the FDA usually requires two studies showing efficacy of a new investigational medication before they will consider reviewing it for FDA approval. So, while KarXT is not yet approved and remains investigational, it is a big step forward on the approval pathway.
The second reason this is so important is that KarXT has a different mechanism than any current antipsychotic approved for schizophrenia. It has activity on muscarinic receptors in the CNS rather than on the dopamine or serotonin receptors of current medications.
“It is an incredibly exciting time for Karuna; with two positive, registrational trials in hand for KarXT, we are another step closer to potentially providing the first new class of medicine in more than 50 years to the millions of people worldwide living with schizophrenia,” said Steve Paul, M.D., chief executive officer, president, and chairman of Karuna Therapeutics in a quote from the press release. "People living with serious mental illness are in dire need of medicines that work differently than current treatments in order to find relief from burdensome symptoms." Karuna plans to submit a New Drug Application in mid-2023.
Environment trumps genetics in psychotic episodes -- Last month, we posted that development of psychosis influenced by neighborhood so, we had to post this one that took the research into environment vs. genetics a step further: comparing twins. In the latest twin study, researchers at Birkbeck University of London looked at 4,855 pairs of 16-year-old twins in the United Kingdom from 2014–2020 and another 6,435 twin pairs from Sweden and found that environmental factors play a greater role in psychotic experiences among adolescents, like hallucinations and paranoia, than do genetic factors—especially when these young people are exposed to known environmental risk factors like bullying, smoking, cannabis use, or low birth weight.
Studying Schizophrenia by Emulating It in a Petri Dish -- In a new study published in Nature Communications, research teams at Columbia University have developed lab-grown renditions of brain-like cell assemblies they call Modular Neural Networks, or MoNNets. Joseph Gogos, MD, Ph.D., a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute said, “MoNNets could be a great help [in the treatment of psychiatric disorders] because they’re well suited for both teasing out the biological bases of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders and for efficiently vetting hundreds or thousands of possible pharmacological treatments.”
MoNNets have the potential to shift the way scientists think about mental illness. Rather than characterizing mental illnesses as chemical imbalances in the brain that just need the right drug to be managed, MoNNets that mimic at least some of the cellular and neuron-circuitry features of brains of patients with schizophrenia, open the conceptual framework toward mental illness as a circuit disorder.
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On September 21, 2022, iResearch Atlanta is hosting a “Memory Screening Day” in partnership with GAP-Net. The team at iResearch Atlanta will be inviting seniors from the local community to visit the iResearch office for a free memory screening. Seniors and their caregivers can also learn more about brain health and clinical research and access resources from local advocacy groups.
This is a great way to bring the community together, offering site resources, and building trust within the community!
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Segal Trials is proud to announce that they will once again be a part of NAMI Walks Your Way - Broward! They are inviting everyone to be part of the Segal Trials team and support mental health with them.
The NAMI-Walks-Your-Way-Segal Trials page is now open and ready to receive your donation! When you join or support the team, you are contributing to the movement and helping to open doors throughout the mental health world. United, we are a force: increasing awareness, raising funds and building a stronger community.
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The STARR Site Certification was created to help advance mental health clinical research by promoting community engagement, empathy, and communication between research sites, staff, patients, and advocacy groups, as well as providing support for best practices around working with advocacy, suicide prevention, and other areas that enhance clinical research. |
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Everything The STARR Coalition does comes from our stakeholders looking to make positive change.
The STARR Coalition is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, our Tax ID # is 47-4634007.
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Letters to Strangers is excited to announce an opportunity for individuals interested in working within their communities to support mental health.
Letters to Strangers is looking for campus or community-based ambassadors for a study investigating the effects of group-based psychosocial interventions to reinforce mental wellbeing across the U.S..
Ambassadors would:
- lead the 6 sessions per the study instructions;
- provide participants with any required materials;
- help Letters to Strangers recruit peers in your community who may be a good fit for this study. Most likely, they'll be fellow students.
Letters to Strangers would provide all the necessary recruitment and discussion materials. The study participants will take part in 6 peer group meetings and discussions as part of an IRB-approved study. Sessions would occur every two weeks with each session lasting 30 to 60 minutes.
Ambassadors are eligible to receive stipend compensation, along with learning more about mental health and bettering the mental health landscape in their community.
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Sites -- please share your feedback!
Would you accept a person with a serious mental illness to work strictly as a peer support person at your site?
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Please select one response:
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Absolutely -- it's a great idea!
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Yes, but only if I didn't have to pay them.
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The STARR Coalition is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, our Tax ID # is 47-4634007.
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The STARR Coalition | phone: 501-725-8890 | www.thestarr.org |
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SHARE, CARE, AND BE KIND. |
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