Community Listening Forum Toolkit: Make Your Voice Heard!
This step-by-step guide includes everthing you need to host a succesful Community Listening Forum. Learn more...
Recovery Advocacy Toolkit: Making Our Voices Count
includes media outreach templates, event organizing “how-to” materials and many other resources. Learn more…
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eNewsletter - October 17, 2008
Recovery Community Representation
Faces & Voices’ strategic plan calls for developing more opportunities for meaningful representation of the voice of the organized recovery community on policy panels, review boards and Advisory Boards. Thanks to founding Board member Jeannie Villarreal for sharing her recent experiences as a reviewer. “Last month I had the opportunity to participate as a consumer reviewer in the evaluation of research proposals submitted to the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program (PRMRP) sponsored by the Department of Defense. Thanks to board member John deMiranda for letting me know about this opportunity. This PRMRP program is a service offered through the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Although consumer advocates and scientists have worked together in partnership since 1995 with PRMRP research proposals, this is the first time consumers from the Alcohol and Substance Use Disorder community have been invited to participate on the review panel.
Our team of three consumers and 17 scientists reviewed 42 proposals from the alcohol/substance abuse/social service classification over a two day period. The scientists were responsible for evaluating the areas of scientific process, impact, budget, personnel and environment. As consumers, we were instructed to focus on the community impact, but were encouraged to offer our remarks in any other areas of evaluation.
I don’t mind saying that I was a bit intimidated the first day, as I sat down at the table and realized that each of the 17 members of the scientific community held PhDs in their fields of expertise. However, as we progressed with the reviews, I found out quickly that all of my fellow reviewers were very open to our comments and concerns and on occasion, adjusted scores due to our input. I was told by a research biologist on the team that as scientists they sometimes get so caught up in the research that they lose their focus on the purpose and the end product. He said that having consumer reviewers on the panel keeps him grounded and focused on the purpose. A senior scientist and program manager of American Institute of Biological Sciences told me that she found the consumer reviewers an integral part of the review process and would be inviting back consumer reviewers in this discipline next year.
This review panel seemed to be a perfect opportunity for the recovery community to begin the partnership with the scientific community. It is my hope that this is another avenue for us to interact with institutions and organizations to bring our expertise to the table.”