IAS DEI
The USC Institute for Addiction Science (IAS) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mission is to create spaces, relationships, and initiatives where our faculty, staff and students can bring their whole selves. We center our efforts on members of historically marginalized groups and design initiatives that support recruitment, retention, a healthy internal culture, and engagement with the wider USC community and beyond.
We believe in creating and maintaining an inclusive environment for faculty, staff, students, alumni, and other stakeholders representing all backgrounds. Institutional inclusivity challenges systemic inequities and enables us to generate transformative knowledge.
Diversity of individual backgrounds and points of view are affirmed, respected, and celebrated at IAS. As an institute, we strive to learn from the history of social inequity in our country and to hold ourselves accountable. We seek to engage in authentic communication and to initiate conversations that offer diverse perspectives and a deepening of our own self-awareness.
USC IAS believes that a diverse and inclusive community of students, staff, and faculty is necessary to address the problem of addiction. Our goal is to create a research institute that encompasses the full diversity of the population. A team diverse in thought and perspective is better equipped to meet challenges and engender solutions to the problem of addiction.
We recognize diversity in all its forms including race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, socioeconomic background, disability, body size, veteran status, etc.
USC IAS's research programs are uniquely situated at the heart of one of the most diverse cities in the world. As such, we prioritize conducting innovative and important research within an inclusive research culture that is reflective of our community.
USC Institute for Addiction Science aims to recruit, retain, and increase the number of minoritized students enrolled in our programs. Our goal is to graduate culturally competent and socially aware addiction scientists who are prepared to practice in the community at large.
Current research shows that educational quality is higher in culturally diverse and inclusive learning environments. Therefore, we invest in initiatives that will recruit, support, and retain students, trainees, faculty, and staff who are reflective of the community and the world that we serve. We are committed to educating students on how addiction chemistries within a complex society so they may produce innovative solutions in research and clinical care. Our hope is that our students will eliminate social injustices by advocating for policies and legislation that dismantle the systems of discrimination and oppression that contribute to addictive behaviors.
IAS maintains a very active role in the community and has a well-documented history of developing and promoting programs to improve the health status of underrepresented minoritized groups. USC IAS partners with community organizations across Los Angeles that are diverse in race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, socioeconomic background, disability, body size, veteran status, and so on. We are committed to disseminating research findings that will directly impact the communities most vulnerable to addiction. Our institute seeks to further understand the socio-political causes of addiction and use this knowledge to impact legislation and take tangible steps towards reform in the community. USC IAS is committed to solving the problem of addiction from a "cell-to-society" approach. To aid in this effort, IAS has developed a diverse Community Advisory Board that offers feedback on our work and ensures that we are best serving populations of greatest need.