June 6, 2024
Dear Hossein,
Thank you for your latest communication. I was quite pleased by the video of the music group from Mashad city performing the Song of Congress 60. Is this a song that is sung within all the branches of Congress 60? It is a delight to see the growing role of music within Congress 60. There is something almost magical about music’s ability to inspire and unite people. I hope its use in Congress 60 will motivate other addiction treatment programs to utilize its emotional power.
I also appreciated the photo of you at your farm. I know from our earlier conversations how much the farm serves as time for reflection and renewal despite the work you perform while there. I think each of us needs to find a sacred place that serves those functions, and I am glad you have the farm as respite from all your duties within Congress 60. I created and tended a bamboo garden that for years served this function for me, and I have missed my time there in recent years.
The animal research you are doing is important, and I appreciate your regular progress reports related to it as well as your success getting the results disseminated at key professional conferences and through key professional journals.
I have been thinking more about our possible next paper collaboration. As mentioned before, I think we could do an updated profile on the history of Congress 60’s history, philosophy, and methods but I think one additional area would need to be included to achieve publication in one of the leading peer-reviewed addiction journals. That additional area would be to provide 1) data profiling Congress 60 members and 2) data on key performance indicators related to such factors as rate of treatment completion and post-treatment follow-up data. I would be able to do an analysis of this data and compare it to data already published from other countries. Are there existing reports done within Congress 60 that summarize the data collected at admission to Congress 60 and that summarize the results of the follow-up visits that occur after completion of DST treatment?
The kinds of data that I have for comparison would be a breakdown by age, gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, living arrangement, employment status, education, age of first use, primary drug, frequency of use, primary route of administration, referral source, number of prior arrests, number of prior treatments, treatment duration, discharge status, percentage abstinent at follow-up. Could you share with me what similar data is routinely collected within Congress 60 and how accessible such data would be to summarize for all of Congress 60 or a specific Congress 60 branch for a particular year? Are there particular roles in Congress 60 responsible for the collection and analysis of data collected on Congress 60 members? This information will help advance my thinking about what might be possible to include in a potential publication. I look forward to your ideas related to this. Do you agree that an updated profile of Congress 60 with this type of data included would be a positive next step in our collaborations?
Please extend my warmest regards to your family and to all members of Congress 60.
Friends and Brothers Forever