Abstracts from the 2019 Annual Meeting of the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM) in New Delhi, India and a thank you to the 2019 peer reviewers of Substance Abuse

Abstract

The journal Substance Abuse has a long history of collaboration with the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM). The journal is thus proud of presenting selected abstracts from the 2019 ISAM Annual Meeting in New Delhi, India. The meeting occurred in November, 2019 with a theme of “Addiction in a Rapidly Changing World.” The meeting was co-sponsored by the World Psychiatric Association, World Association of Social Psychiatry, Indian Psychiatric Society, and the Indian Association for Social Psychiatry. The meeting included symposia, plenary sessions, invited lectures, workshops, and oral and poster scholarly presentations. The journal Substance Abuse has a long history of collaboration with ISAM. ISAM leader and member scholars have authored many works in the journal. The journal continues to be excited to partner with ISAM to present the scholarly work of its members and other international scholars. We look forward to advancing the partnership for years to come.

The International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM) has a vision for “a strong and forward looking society in addiction medicine that supports its members and affiliate organizations to deliver high-quality patient centered care all over the world. In 1998, 25 physicians from 11 countries developed a statement of mission for this initiative: “An international collaboration of physicians in addiction medicine can accomplish certain ends, which are not easily achieved in the respective national setting by individual participants.”¹ ISAM further sought to address this through (1) credibility of the physician’s role, (2) medical education, (3) international consensus, (4) research, (5) policy, (6) impaired professionals, and (7) prevention.

The journal Substance Abuse has a long history of collaboration with ISAM. ISAM leader and member scholars have authored work in the journal. In addition, the journal has published the many selected abstracts of recent ISAM’s annual conferences. The journal has published abstracts from the 2006 Annual Meeting of ISAM in Oporto, Portugal; the 2012 Annual Meeting of ISAM Annual Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland; the 2013 Annual Meeting of ISAM in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; the 2015 Annual Meeting of ISAM in Dundee, Scotland; the 2016 Annual Meeting of ISAM in Montreal, Canada; the 2017 Annual Meeting of ISAM in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; and the 2018 Annual Meeting of ISAM in Busan, Korea.^2–8 The 2014 Annual Meeting of ISAM abstracts were published in another journal.⁹ In addition, the journal has published a 2014 Substance Abuse Special Issue, hosted and supported by ISAM, regarding international addiction policies, scholarship, and collaboration.¹⁰ Special communications from ISAM were also published in our journal.¹¹ Perhaps we are most proud of introducing ISAM to world in El-Guebaly’s commentary, “About ISAM: Its Inceptions and Promises.”¹²

We are thus very proud of presenting selected abstracts from the 2019 Annual meeting of ISAM that occurred in New Delhi, India (see the online supplement to this paper).¹³ When citing abstracts of the 2019 Annual Meeting of ISAM, we suggest the format included on the first page of the online supplement.

The 21st Annual Meeting of the International Society of Addiction Medicine occurred in November, 2019 with a theme, “Addiction in a Rapidly Changing World.” The organizing committee was Chaired by Rakesh Chadda, Anju Dhawan was the Organizing Secretary, and ISAM’s President Kathleen Brady welcomed the attendees to the meeting. The meeting was co-sponsored by the World Psychiatric Association, World Association of Social Psychiatry, Indian Psychiatric Society, and the Indian Association for Social Psychiatry. The meeting included symposia, plenary sessions, invited lectures, workshops, and oral and poster scholarly presentations.

The journal continues to be excited to partner with ISAM to present the scholarly work of its members and other international scholars. We look forward to advancing the partnership for years to come.

While international scholarship is welcomed in our journal, the meat and bones of peer reviewed papers consists of synergistic and collegial relationship between our authors (the meat) and our peer reviewers (the bones). Our journal is extremely appreciative of the external peer reviewers that work voluntarily to review papers submitted to our journal and provide expert feedback to our prospective authors and editors regarding the merits of the manuscripts. In every instance of the peer review process, the manuscripts accepted to the Substance Abuse journal have improved in quality.

Each year the Substance Abuse journal recognizes our external peer reviewers by name and we are happy to do so for the external peer reviewers in 2019 (see the online supplement to this paper). In 2019, we had over 269 scholars who reviewed over 347 manuscripts for the journal. In many instances, external peer reviewers have indicated that others have helped in the review of this work. These others could be students, trainees, and even other faculty. We have recognized some of these others by name, if those names were given to us. We would like to recognize those faculty who are training the next generation of peer reviewers; these faculty are extremely valued by editors of scholarly journals. Furthermore, many of the named peer reviewers have reviewed multiple articles during the year. Our 2019 Peer Reviewer of the Year—Ana Holtey, DO—was recognized for her peer review excellence at the annual meeting of the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Association of Medical Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMERSA).¹⁴ We are excited to moving the science of addiction forward through disseminating excellent peer-reviewed scholarly work in 2020 and beyond.

Disclosure statement

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or any of its academic affiliates.