The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #38040

Suzanne Wenzel, PhD¹, Maria Orlando, PhD¹, Wallace Mandell, PhD, MPH², Patricia Ebener¹, Kirsten Becker, MSPH¹, Leslie Damesek, MHSA², Donna Farley, MPH, PhD¹, Kitty Chan, PhD¹, Gery Ryan, PhD¹, Matthew Chinman, PhD¹, and Audrey Burnam, PhD¹. (1) Drug Policy Research Center, RAND, 1700 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407, 310-393-0411, slwenzel@rand.org, (2) Phoenix House Foundation, 164 West 74th Street, New York, NY 10023

Treatment is an effective response to substance abuse, yet much remains to be learned about the treatment process that is responsible for producing client outcomes. Process information is critical for understanding and improving quality of care. Understanding treatment process in the therapeutic community presents an especially significant challenge to providers and researchers. A new study sponsored by NIDA begins with the refinement and validation of a theoretically grounded, client-based measure of therapeutic community treatment process developed by the RAND/Phoenix House Research Partnership and will end with the implementation of quality improvement strategies within therapeutic community settings. This five-year study has the goal of improving quality of care and represents an innovative step for treatment services research and practice. Study participants are approximately 1000 adult and adolescent clients in residential and in-prison Phoenix House treatment programs in California, Florida, New York, and Texas. We will describe and justify our quality of care model and steps to improve quality of care in the therapeutic community, and we will present initial results of our definition and measurement of process components using state-of-the-art qualitative and quantitative techniques. Our pilot results indicate that quantitative analyses largely support dimensions of process that emerged through qualitative consensus group techniques, and that the process measure shows promise in capturing change in clients during treatment.

Learning Objectives:

• recognize the importance of quality of care to substance abuse treatment services;
• describe steps in assessing and improving quality of care;
• describe components of therapeutic community treatment process.

Keywords: Drug Abuse Treatment, Quality of Care

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: RAND has a significant relationship with Phoenix House Foundation in that we are research partners. Phoenix House holds a subcontract on the NIDA Quality of Care grant to RAND and has supported preliminary development of process measures.