Stephen Mennemeyer, Ph.D.Stephen Mennemeyer, Ph.D., was honored for his two decades of research on how to treat homeless people with cocaine addictions. Mennemeyer, a professor emeritus at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, received the Mental Health Policy and Economics Research Award from the International Center of Mental Health Policy and Economics.
Mennemeyer was honored for his work leading four studies called Homeless 1 through Homeless 4, which treated cocaine substance abuse among chronically homeless adults. The studies assigned treatment-seeking volunteers to different forms of counseling, some in combination with the provision of safe housing and work therapy contingent upon achieving and maintaining abstinence from substances.
This honor is specifically meaningful to Mennemeyer because he could recognize a colleague.
“This is particularly gratifying because retired Department of Psychology Professor Jesse B. Milby, the principal investigator of all the Homeless studies, died shortly after helping me edit the final version of the paper,” Mennemeyer said.
The award was presented to him at the International Center of Mental Health Policy and Economics conference in Venice, Italy.