Implementing evidence-based practices in community treatment programs: Real-world challenges, benefits, and opportunities

Strategies for integrating “evidence based practices” into drug and alcohol treatment settings have received much attention in peer review journal articles, public health and AOD conferences, and local and national funding initiatives in the past five years. Public and private funders are increasingly altering their grant-making guidelines to require treatment providers to use one of several identified evidence based practices in order to receive funding or to demonstrate that there is a sufficient ‘evidence base' to support any intervention for which funding is being sought. In addition, SAMHSA and NIDA have dedicated significant resources to “bridging the gap between research and practice” by widely disseminating information about empirically supported practices for the treatment of substance abusers. Despite these efforts to bring more evidence based practices into drug and alcohol treatment settings, little attention has been paid to the challenges associated with doing so. These challenges range from prohibitive costs associated with becoming certified in a particular treatment model, to addressing staff resistance, to finding sufficient time for training and supervision to translating theoretical concepts into real-world settings. This presentation will provide an overview of these and other challenges as well as recommended strategies for addressing them based on the experiences at two substance abuse treatment programs operated by the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation (PHMC), a large, non-profit health and social service organization in Philadelphia. The presentation will also outline several benefits associated with implementing evidence based practices, including increased staff retention and satisfaction.