Substance Use Prevention Track at the Biennial Native Children's Research Exchange (NCRE) Conference 2025

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Long before NIDA’s Racial Equity Initiative was launched in the summer of 2020, the Native Children’s Research Exchange (NCRE) was created to be a home for researchers focused on child and adolescent development within Indigenous communities. NCRE conferences provide opportunities for rapid exchange of information and foster relationships that are central to effective research in partnership with communities. Since the first conference in 2008, NCRE has focused on making space for researchers to engage in deep dialogue about their research with others also working to inform better outcomes for Indigenous children through rigorous research. Specifically, NCRE has become a focal meeting for researchers and community partners seeking to grow their understanding of research related to substance use prevention for Indigenous youth. Over the past 16 years, NCRE has fostered a culture of open dialogue and exchange of ideas that has resulted in fruitful cross-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration. This platform has amplified the reach and impact of the scarce research resources dedicated to Indigenous health research. Many NCRE members are already directly engaged in developing, testing, and implementing prevention programming for Indigenous children and adolescents. Others are engaged in research that has implications for substance use prevention (e.g., research on the impacts of exposure to trauma on children’s developmental outcomes or on the protective role of culture). With a focused Substance Use Prevention Track within the upcoming 2025 NCRE conference, leading researchers and emerging investigators will gather to share their latest work, which can then be leveraged to find innovative strategies to support prevention of early and problematic substance use among Indigenous youth. We will use the NCRE conference platform to implement a Substance Use Prevention Track that will: (1) Build Indigenous leadership in youth substance use prevention research, and (2) Broadly disseminate culturally grounded solutions to Indigenous youth substance use prevention