CIHR Team in transdisciplinary studies in DWI onset, persistence, prevention and treatment.

This proposal describes the next steps in a pioneering integrative and transdisciplinary research program, initiated in 2002, to reduce driving while impaired by alcohol and other drugs (DWI). We extend the team's scope and membership, while maintaining the innovation and collaboration that have inspired us to date. We propose an interlocking, progressive DWI research program to pursue five main objectives: 1) clarification of causal factors; 2) development and evaluation of a first-time offender classification system; 3) evaluation of the deterrent effect of policies and programs; 4) study of offenders who fail to engage in remedial programs; 5) KTE. These issues are key to advancing DWI prevention and intervention. By its transdisciplinary logic, this proposal is consistent with CIHR's "Blueprint" to "catalyze and encourage the convergence of disciplines that underlie the most exciting and important discoveries in health research, and to resolve evermore complex health problems". By its integrative approach, the team, involving Quebec's licensing authorities and other decision-makers, knowledge brokers, and researchers in traffic safety, addictions, psychology, criminology, behavioural neuroscience, psychiatry, medicine, biology, and epidemiology, fortifies its pursuit of a problem-based, user guided DWI research agenda, its capacity to create new knowledge, and to expedite knowledge translation into reducing the public health burden related to DWI-related crashes in Canada, and of course, immeasurable human loss and suffering.