Community violence and youth: affect, behavior, substance use, and academics.

Community violence is recognized as a major public health problem (WHO, World Report on Violence and Health, 2002) that Americans increasingly understand has adverse implications beyond inner-cities. However, the majority of research on chronic community violence exposure focuses on ethnic minority, impoverished, and/or crime-ridden communities while treatment and prevention focuses on the perpetrators of the violence, not on the youth who are its direct or indirect victims. School-based treatment and preventive interventions are needed for children at elevated risk for exposure to community violence.

Enrolling and retaining mothers of substance-exposed infants in drug abuse treatment.

This study provided an experimental test of a drug abuse treatment enrollment and retention intervention in a sample of 103 Black mothers of substance-exposed infants. Significantly more women assigned to the Engaging Moms Program enrolled into drug abuse treatment than did women assigned to the control condition (88% vs. 46%).

Transporting a research-based adolescent drug treatment into practice.

This article describes the key ingredients and processes in transporting an empirically supported, research-developed family therapy for adolescent drug abusers, Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT), into an intensive day treatment program. Using the same systems change principles that guide this treatment approach, the technology transfer process has been, from its inception, a collaborative, multidimensional, systemic intervention aimed at changing organizational structures, and attitudinal and behavioral patterns with multiple staff members at several levels of the program. This article describes: (1) the conceptual and empirical basis for these technology transfer efforts; (2) the technology being adapted and transferred; and (3) the critical events and processes that have shaped the transfer of MDFT into this program.