Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116345

Gary A. Hill, PhD, NREPP, Manila Consulting, 6802 Grays Mill Road, Warrenton, VA 20187 and Michael J. Stoil, PhD, NREPP, Manila Consulting Group, 6707 Old Dominion Drive, Suite 315, McLean, VA 22101, 703 448 2300, mjstoil@ioip.com.

The presentation will explain how developments in SAMHSA's approach to identifying effectiveness reflect an evolutionary process. For more than a decade, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has moved toward an increasingly systematic approach to identifying and confirming evidence-based practices in substance abuse prevention and treatment. Early definitions of “effective” were unique to individual programs or practices. By the mid-1990s, SAMHSA had identified common attributes of effectiveness in the High Risk Youth (HRY) Databank and later expanded the scope of the HRY Databank to include all substance abuse prevention programs. Model Programs derived from this expansion came to serve as a crucial source of State decisions on activities funded by block grants and other federally funded programs. Similarly, initial observations on effectiveness incorporated in CSAT's Treatment Improvement Protocols (TIPs) served as the basis for the assessment of treatment in the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). The authors describe the logical “next step” in progress toward broadly-applicable criteria for “effectiveness” in terms of plans to replace the SAMHSA Model Programs with tools that associate the use of specific practices with specific situations.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the milestones in SAMHSA’s development of an approach to identifying evidence-based practices in substance abuse treatment and prevention.
  Assess the interpretation of this development as an evolutionary process driven by increasingly broad application of common criteria for “effectiveness.”

Keywords: Federal Policy, Evidence Based Practice

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commertial supporters WITH THE EXCEPTION OF I am a paid columnist for Medquest Publications of Cleveland, Ohio..