Biomedical and behavioral researchers have been exhorted to include multidisciplinary approaches as a way of tackling some of the most thorny research questions. In the drug abuse field, significant progress within the realms of basic behavioral and neuroscience research and in clinical/epidemiological studies have often highlighted critical knowledge gaps that need to be filled by integrating diverse approaches to solve complex problems. The questions remain: How do we develop and foster these new and innovative strategies? How do we forge useful alliances between basic and applied researchers to implement these strategies? In this symposium we presented two examples of linkages between basic and applied studies, which have served to enhance and inform both types of research, and are beginning to offer solutions for reducing the public health problem of drug abuse and addiction. Dr. Phil Fisher presented findings from studies of children under adverse circumstances who have abnormalities in their HPA Axis function; Dr. Nick Heather described how the multidisciplinary field of behavioral economics can improve our understanding of the behavioral and economic mechanisms that lead to drug abuse through economic analysis and laboratory models, and Drs. Wilson Compton and David Shurtleff provided a discussion of how these emerging multidisciplinary approaches can address important issues in drug abuse and addiction research.