Research

Dr. Tiffany Lee is the Director of the Specialty Program in Alcohol and Drug Abuse (SPADA). Her research interests include addiction training in counselor education and diversity issues in treatment. From 2015 to 2018, Dr. Lee was the project director and the principal investigator of a $526,193 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant project entitled SBIRT Training for Students and Community Organizations in the Health Professions in West Michigan. This grant was funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and involved a three-year research study related to screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment (SBIRT). 

From 2019 to 2022, Dr. Lee worked with an interdisciplinary team of WMU faculty on a $1.3 million Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant entitled, Michigan Youth Prevention and Recovery from Opioid Youth Disorders (MY-PROUD). Dr. Lee was key personnel and headed up the SBIRT trainings that occurred with students and health professionals in the state of Michigan, including the Upper Peninsula. She is also the author of the textbook, Embracing Diversity: Treatment and Care in Addiction Counseling (2nd Ed.).

Dr. Dennis Simpson focuses his research and publications on Neuropsychopharmacology. Specifically, the majority of his research addresses how psychoactive/psychotropic drugs enter the human body, how they are distributed in the body, how they affect the anatomy and physiology of the body, how they are metabolized by the body, how they are eliminated by the body, the sciences that are applied to measure these drugs (and their metabolites) in body specimens and behaviors resulting from specific levels of these drugs in the body. Dr. Simpson collaborates with numerous other researchers both within WMU and at other research intensive institutions of higher education.