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IWRI

September 15, 2015

IWRI Training Fellows’ Annual Writing Retreat Held April 21-24, 2015

Writing Retreat participantsThis year’s third annual writing retreat took place at the beautiful, expansive Tamaya Resort on the Santa Ana Pueblo north of Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Lording over the eastern horizon 5,000 feet above the redolent sagebrush plains is 10,678 feet Sandia Mountain.  Flowing close to the hotel, the upper reaches of the Rio Grande nurtured riparian cottonwood groves.  The contemplative setting allowed for long stretches of uninterrupted time to write manuscripts and exchange ideas.
The Indigenous HIV/AIDS Research Training (IHART) program (Principal Investigator Karina Walters, PhD; Co-Investigator Bonnie Duran, DrPH; Program Director Meg MacDonald, PhD) sponsored sixteen fellows from this year’s and last year’s cohort groups.

The Indigenous Substance Abuse, Medicines, and Addictions Research (ISMART) program (Principal Investigator Karina Walters, PhD; Co-Investigator Tessa Evans-Campbell, PhD; Program Director Anastasia Ramey, MSW) sponsored twenty fellows from two cohort groups.

Two guests and six IWRI faculty and staff, led and/or otherwise facilitated the retreat.  The formal sessions were practical (e.g., “How to write a research grant,” and “How to write a scientific paper”) or informative (e.g., “State of the field: HIV/AIDS research,” and “State of the field: Substance abuse, medicines and addictions research”); and the open and informal nature of the sessions encouraged the different IHART and ISMART cohorts to learn about each other’s fields.  In addition, there were two lively panel discussions conducted by the outdoor bonfire on HIV/AIDS and Substance Abuse on consecutive evenings.

  1.     One new initiative this year was the availability of two IWRI editors to serve as on-call writing coaches and editors.

    2. The consensus among the fellows was that a dedicated time and space to think and write addressed a great need for time that  is often missing in their all-too-busy lives

The IHART/ISMART Writing Retreat is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health: NIMH Award #R25MH084565; NIDA Award #HHSN271201200663P; and NIMHD Award #P60MD006909.