Based in the Addictions Department, the Section of Alcohol Research is led by Professor Colin Drummond and comprises a multidisciplinary research team.
The team has a national and international reputation in conducting research, teaching, training, and policy work. It has been successful in attracting substantial external research grant funding for its work and has been recognised by the UK Department of Health as having demonstrated important outputs and impacts. The group has developed a large network of collaborations with other research groups in the field nationally and internationally.
Professor Colin Drummond is Professor of Addiction Psychiatry and Honorary Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and has over 30 years of experience in alcohol research primarily on clinical trials, epidemiology, health service and public health research. He is Chief Investigator for the UK Department of Health National Screening and Brief Intervention Research Programme (SIPS) and leads the Alcohol Research theme of the South London CLAHRC.
Professor Drummond is also an advisor to the UK Department of Health and Public Health England and is a member of the World Health Organisation’s Expert Committee on Drug and Alcohol Problems. His work has included the development of Models of Care, the national framework for drug and alcohol services in England and chairing the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Alcohol Treatment Guidelines. He is the chair of the Medical Council on Alcohol and past chair of the Faculty of Addictions, Royal College of Psychiatrists, and is a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator.
Dr Paolo Deluca is Reader in Addiction Research, with a background in cognitive and developmental psychology, and more than 20 years' experience in the addiction field. He was the programme manager of the National Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention Research Programme for Sensible drinking for adult (SIPS) and adolescents (SIPSJr). He is deputy lead for the South London NIHR CLAHRC Alcohol Theme. He was lead researcher and co-principal investigator on the EU funded Psychonaut 2002 project and Psychonaut Web Mapping project on illicit drug information and availability of ‘legal highs’ on the internet which have developed a web monitoring system for novel psychoactive substances (NPS).
More recently, he has been awarded grants from the European Commission which look at the internet and other ICTs to deliver prevention services addressing the use of novel compounds in vulnerable individuals (ReDNeT: The Recreational Drugs European Network, 2010-2012), the marketing strategies of legal highs (ALICE RAP, 2011-2016), the misuse of codeine (CODEMISUSED 2013-2017) and the real time monitoring of the availability and distribution of NPS over the internet (CASSANDRA 2015-2017).
He has particular expertise in conducting and evaluating health service and public health research. He also has a specific interest in Information Technologies and their roles on substance misuse prevention and treatment (eHealth). Paolo Deluca has also extensive expertise on national and international clinical trial management, intervention development, delivery and evaluation.