A powerful vision.
Fueled by a meaningful mission.

Recognizing the outstanding base of addiction experts at USC and that interdisciplinary collaboration among them had historically been underleveraged, IAS was launched in July 2018 under the leadership of Adam Leventhal (IAS Director, Preventive Medicine) and John Clapp (IAS Co-Director, Social Work) with 30 inaugural faculty members across 5 schools. Institute Startup was supported by financial seed funding for IAS membership interaction activities by the USC Office of Research Collaboration Fund and IAS leadership salary support by the Keck School of Medicine and Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. A $467,000 gift from the Red Rosebud Foundation in April 2019 supported hiring an IAS director of operations, which accelerated the Institute’s productivity and scope of programming.

Since its inception, the Institute has successfully mobilized and expanded membership to over 80 faculty from 10 different schools, colleges, and hospitals, developed a programmatic agenda and strategic plan, established an organizational structure, and made important initial achievements in transdisciplinary addiction science, training and education, and community engagement.