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. 2024 Mar 11:15:1230318.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1230318. eCollection 2024.

World addiction medicine reports: formation of the International Society of Addiction Medicine Global Expert Network (ISAM-GEN) and its global surveys

Hamed Ekhtiari  1   2 , Arash Khojasteh Zonoozi  3   4 , Parnian Rafei  5 , Fateme Sadat Abolghasemi  3   4 , Dan Pemstein  6 , Tarek Abdelgawad  7 , Sophia Achab  8 , Hamad Al Ghafri  9 , Mustafa Al'Absi  1 , Michaël Bisch  10 , Aldo Alberto Conti  11 , Atul Ambekar  12 , Shalini Arunogiri  13 , Roshan Bhad  12 , Rabia Bilici  14 , Kathleen Brady  15 , Gregory Bunt  16 , Anja Busse  17 , Jenna L Butner  18 , Ahmad Danesh  19 , Joseph El-Khoury  20 , Fatima El Omari  21 , Darius Jokūbonis  22 , Cor de Jong  23 , Geert Dom  24 , Mohsen Ebrahimi  3 , Ali Fathi Jouzdani  3 , Marica Ferri  25 , Susanna Galea-Singer  26   27 , Dario Gigena Parker  28 , Susumu Higuchi  29 , Preethy Kathiresan  30 , Emira Khelifa  31 , Christos Kouimtsidis  32   33   34 , Evgeny M Krupitsky  35 , Jiang Long  36 , Icro Maremmani  37   38 , Garrett McGovern  39 , Hossein Mohaddes Ardabili  3   4 , Afarin Rahimi-Movaghar  3 , Solomon Tshimong Rataemane  40 , Arshiya Sangchooli  41 , Goodman Sibeko  42 , Anna Maria Vella  43 , Salvador Benjamin D Vista  44 , Mehran Zare-Bidoky  3 , Min Zhao  45 , Afzal Javed  46 , Marc N Potenza  47   48   49   50 , Alexander Mario Baldacchino  26
Affiliations

World addiction medicine reports: formation of the International Society of Addiction Medicine Global Expert Network (ISAM-GEN) and its global surveys

Hamed Ekhtiari et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Addiction medicine is a dynamic field that encompasses clinical practice and research in the context of societal, economic, and cultural factors at the local, national, regional, and global levels. This field has evolved profoundly during the past decades in terms of scopes and activities with the contribution of addiction medicine scientists and professionals globally. The dynamic nature of drug addiction at the global level has resulted in a crucial need for developing an international collaborative network of addiction societies, treatment programs and experts to monitor emerging national, regional, and global concerns. This protocol paper presents methodological details of running longitudinal surveys at national, regional, and global levels through the Global Expert Network of the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM-GEN). The initial formation of the network with a recruitment phase and a round of snowball sampling provided 354 experts from 78 countries across the globe. In addition, 43 national/regional addiction societies/associations are also included in the database. The surveys will be developed by global experts in addiction medicine on treatment services, service coverage, co-occurring disorders, treatment standards and barriers, emerging addictions and/or dynamic changes in treatment needs worldwide. Survey participants in categories of (1) addiction societies/associations, (2) addiction treatment programs, (3) addiction experts/clinicians and (4) related stakeholders will respond to these global longitudinal surveys. The results will be analyzed and cross-examined with available data and peer-reviewed for publication.

Keywords: addiction medicine; elicitation; expert; global; network; survey.

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Conflict of interest statement

2.10.6All the investigators involved in designing the surveys, analyzing the data, interpreting the results and publishing the reports will need to report any potential conflict of interest in advance and inform the principal investigators if there is any update in their conflict of interest within 3 months.Dr. MP has consulted for Opiant Therapeutics, Game Day Data, Baria-Tek, the Addiction Policy Forum, AXA, and Idorsia Pharmaceuticals; been involved in a patent application with Yale University and Novartis; received research support from Mohegan Sun Casino, Children and Screens and the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling; is on the Boards of multiple organizations including the International Society of Addiction Medicine and the Addiction Policy Forum; been a principal investigator on a grant supporting the annual conference of the International Society of Addiction Medicine; participated in surveys, mailings, or telephone consultations related to drug addictions, internet use, impulse-control disorders, and other health topics; consulted for or advised gambling, non-profit and legal entities on issues related to internet use, impulse-control and/addictive disorders; and given academic lectures in grand rounds, continuing medical education events, and other clinical or scientific venues. Dr. AMB has no conflicts of interest with regard to the current work. However unrelated to this project he has received unrestricted educational grants from Schering Plough, Merck Serono, Reckitt Benckiser, CAMURUS and Indivior. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of commercial or financial relationships constituting conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Global distribution of individual experts and addiction societies/associations within the network of ISAM-GEN. (A) Global distribution of individual addiction experts within the network of ISAM-GEN. This map represents the included experts up to the first wave of snowball sampling with the number of experts in each country. (B) Global distribution of addiction societies/associations within the network of ISAM-GEN. The number of members in the host country of each society/association is depicted in this map. Yellow shows countries with no available data on their number of members. Two smaller maps in the lower left corner of the figure show two societies/associations with regional scopes, including Africa & Middle East Congress on Addiction (AMECA) and European Opiate Addiction Treatment Association (EUROPAD). The remainder of the societies/organizations are abbreviated and named as follows: ASAM, American Society of Addiction Medicine; AAAP, American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry; CSAM, Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine; BAP, Barbados Association of Psychiatrists; ArSAM,Argentina Society of Addiction Medicine; ABEAD, Associação Brasileira de Estudos do Álcool e outras Drogas (The Brazilian Association for the Study of Alcohol and Other Drugs); SONEPSYN, Addiction Chapter of the Chilean Society of Psychiatry and Neurology; APAD, Peruvian Association of Addictionology; EUROPAD, European Opiate Addiction Treatment Association; FSWS, Maltese Foundation for Social Welfare Services, OKANA, Greek Organization Against Drugs; SAA, Icelandic Society of Alcoholism and other Addictions; VVGN, Vereniging voor Verslavingsgeneeskunde Nederland (Netherlands Society for Addiction Medicine); LPPA, Lithuanian Association of Addiction Psychiatry; FFA, Fédération Française d’Addictologie (The French Federation of Addictology); RPA, Russian Psychiatric Association; NAAC, Cyprus National Addictions Authority; CzMA, Czech Republic Society of Addiction Medicine; IRESAM, Irish Society of Addiction Medicine; NFRAM, Norwegian Society for Addiction Medicine; BMTA, The Bulgarian Methadone Treatment Association; ILSAM, Israeli Society of Addiction Medicine; AMA, Association Marocaine D’Addictologie (Moroccan Association of Addictology); STADD, Societe Tunisianne d’Addictology (Tunisian Society of Addictology); AMECA, Africa and Middle East Congress on Addiction; AEPA, Addiction Section, Egyptian Psychiatric Association; ISTA, Iranian Institute for Science and Technology of Addiction; ASAM, Afghanistan Society of Addiction Medicine; IRSAM, Iraqi Society for Addiction Medicine; LPS, Lebanese Psychiatric Society; NRC, National Rehabilitation Center; RANZCP, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists: Addiction Faculty; AChAM, Australasian Chapter of Addiction Medicine; APSAD, Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol & other Drugs; APSI, Addiction Psychiatry Society of India; KAAP, Korean Academy of Addiction Psychiatry; AMAM, Addiction Medicine Association of Malaysia; PASS, Philippine Addiction Sciences Society; CADAPT, Chinese Association of Drug Abuse Prevention; IPA, Indonesian Psychiatrist Association; NAMS, National Addictions Management Service of Singapore. NR, Not Reported.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Expert recruitment process flowchart. The initial step of individual experts recruitment consisted of forming a mother dataset of contact persons (N= 1431), by approaching four pools of addiction medicine professionals, including ISAM members; ISAM mailing lists comprising annual ISAM conference, workshops, and examination registrants; addiction medicine experts who contributed to the ISAM 2020 global survey on COVID-19 and SUDs (2); and ISAM regional council representatives who were directly nominated by regional key informants affiliated with ISAM. Through the second step of the expert’s recruitment process, those who responded to ISAM-GEN’s first email (N = 334) were asked to consent to become a part of the network and submit more information about their experience and expertise in the field of addiction medicine for screening and evaluation purposes. Fifteen respondents were excluded at this stage due to their inability to fulfill the criteria (see section 2.4.3 for the criteria list). Eligible individuals (N = 319) were contacted again and were asked to nominate up to three addiction medicine experts from their own geographical regions and three from other regions. Through the first wave of snowball sampling of expert recruitment (September 2022), 50 experts were nominated. The nominated experts were then contacted iteratively (between the recruitment and screening phases). They were approached with the same survey questions for collecting their basic information for evaluation and screening purposes. After removing duplicates, screening for eligibility, and obtaining consent, 15 nominated experts were excluded from the final sample. As of the conclusion of the first wave of snowball sampling (January 2023), the final dataset of experts in the ISAM-GEN network consisted of 354 experts. The experts recruited via snowball sampling were again asked to nominate addiction medicine experts at national and international levels through the second wave of snowball sampling. ISAM: International Society of Addiction Medicine; RC: Regional Council. * The snowball sampling is an ongoing process until a saturation point is reached (minimum of 5 experts for each country/region). This saturation point will be defined based on the overlap in recommended experts and experts already considered for inclusion, but expert invitations may continue for countries not represented by at least ten experts in the network.
Figure 3
Figure 3
National and international snowballing network pattern on a global scale. This figure depicts the network of experts snowballing in two levels of international and national scale. In the international scale map, arrows start from the origin country of the nominator expert and end in the origin country of the nominated expert. The arrow width represents the number of nominations with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5. Country colors range from light to dark orange, representing the number of nominated experts from each country. The national map depicts the number of nominations within a single country, ranging from light to dark orange.
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