NIDA initiative designed to make substance abuse treatment more 'community friendly'

According to a 1998 Institute of Medicine study, despite the availability of a number of effective behavioral treatments for alcohol and drug abuse, research-based treatments have not been adopted widely into community clinical practice. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has awarded seven grants totaling almost $2 million to support research that will identify ways to ease the adaptation of effective behavioral therapies into community-based treatment settings. In turn, some of the more promising therapies that emerge from these grant awards will be able to be funneled into NIDA's National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) for more extensive testing of their application with diverse populations nationwide.

"A major barrier to the adoption of research-based, effective behavioral treatments by community treatment providers is that these treatments may not be 'community friendly'," said NIDA Acting Director, Dr. Glen R. Hanson.

"Instead, treatments are often too lengthy, costly, complex, or difficult to integrate with the care feasible in a community setting, where resources are often limited."

This new research will be directed at adapting existing, effective behavioral therapies into community treatment settings, or to prepare for such adaptation by identifying key components or mechanisms of effective therapies so that these can be preserved when therapies are incorporated into community settings. Additionally, innovative methods of delivering treatment will be developed and tested. The awardees are:

University of Miami, Miami, Florida; Brief Family-Based Therapy for Adolescent Drug Abuse. This project tests a brief (8 sessions) version of a more lengthy, proven-to-be-effective family therapy intervention that targets substance abuse and other HIV risk behaviors in adolescents. Howard A. Liddle is the principal investigator.
University of Pennyslvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Community-Friendly Manual Guided Drug Counseling. This project will focus on creating and testing a "community-friendly" manual-based individual plus group drug counseling package to treat cocaine users. Paul Crits-Christoph is the principal investigator.
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Computer-Based Training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Researchers will develop and test an individualized, interactive, computer-based training program for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) designed for direct access by patients. Kathleen M. Carroll is the principal investigator.
Treatment Research Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Community Reinforcement Through Religious Communities. This study tests a community-reinforcement approach to treating African American women who are abusing cocaine. Kimberly C. Kirby is the principal investigator.
McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts; Modifying Group Therapy for Bipolar Abusers. This study will adapt an efficacious intervention for drug abuse treatment from an individual to a group modality, so that it can be implemented in community settings. Roger D. Weiss is the principal investigator.
UMDNJ-Robert W. Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, New Jersey; Modifying MET for Use with ASI Data. This project will develop and test a computer-assisted Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET) intervention. Douglas M. Ziedonis is the principal investigator.
State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York; BCT for Drug Abuse: A Group Therapy Approach. This study will develop and test a version of Behavioral Couples Therapy (BCT) that can be conducted in a multi-couple group. William Fals-Stewart is the principal investigator.

These awards were made in response to a NIDA Request for Applications, "Modifying and Testing Efficacious Behavioral Therapies to Make Them More Community Friendly" issued in December 2001.

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