North America. Agreement to expedite transfer of findings from treatment research into clinical practice

Citation

(2003), "North America. Agreement to expedite transfer of findings from treatment research into clinical practice", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2003.06216aab.006

North America. Agreement to expedite transfer of findings from treatment research into clinical practice

North America

Agreement to expedite transfer of findings from treatment research into clinical practice

Keywords: NIDA, Knowledge sharing, Addition treatment, Clinical trials

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), have announced a unique intra-agency agreement to expedite the application of findings from treatment research into clinical application. The agreement will help to ensure that findings from NIDA's treatment research will be quickly and readily available to practitioners around the country.

According to SAMHSA administrator Charles G. Curie, the Institute of Medicine says that it can take up to 20 years between the discovery of an effective treatment or intervention and its adoption as part of community-based care. He said the new partnership is a significant step in SAMSHA's efforts working with the National Institutes of Health to define and develop a "Science to services" cycle and to reduce the time to adoption.

Under the agreement, NIDA will provide funding to support CSAT's addiction technology transfer centers (ATTC), a network comprising 14 independent regional centres and a national office charged with increasing the knowledge and skills of addiction treatment practitioners and fostering alliances to support and implement best treatment practices. The purpose of the agreement is to enhance efforts to disseminate and apply findings from NIDA's National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) as well as other NIDA-supported studies to practitioners served by the ATTCs.

The CTN is designed to conduct community-based clinical trials of promising therapies for drug addiction and ensure the timely dissemination of effective treatments to community providers and their patients across a broad range of community-based treatment settings and diversified patient populations. The network is comprised of 17 research nodes around the country. These nodes are conducting a variety of research protocols on behavioural, pharmacological, and integrated behavioural and pharmacological treatment interventions in 27 states at 120 community treatment sites. More than 3,500 patients are participating in these studies.

Further information on NIDA research and other activities can be found on the NIDA home page at www.drugabuse.gov Information on SAMHSA's programs is available at www.samhsa.gov