A clinical instrument to guide brief interventions for adolescents with substance use concerns.

Background: Adolescent substance use is an important public health problem in New Mexico and the United States. The New Mexico Department of Health school-based health centers (SBHCs) universally administer a validated screen, the CRAFFT (Car, Relax, Alone, Forget, Friends, Trouble), for adolescent substance use concerns; however, quality assurance efforts revealed that SBHC providers needed more information at the point of screening to initiate brief interventions for students with positive CRAFFT screens. The CHISPA (Cocaine, Heroin, IV drugs, Synthetic pot, Pot, Alcohol) was developed to gather specific information on recent substance use experience to guide brief interventions.

Adolescent substance use: Assessing the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of a school-based health center workforce.

Background: Recent attention has focused on the potential for school-based health centers (SBHCs) to provide access points for adolescent substance use care. In 2015, the University of New Mexico began screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) training for providers at New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH)-funded SBHCs across the state. This study assesses baseline knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the New Mexico SBHC provider workforce regarding adolescent substance use and provision of services.

Patient relapse in the context of drug abuse treatment.

How do addiction treatment programs integrate the expectation of relapse into drug abuse treatment? This article serves as a thought piece to pose questions rather than definitive solutions. It reflects a distillation of discussions that occurred at the National Institute on Drug Abuse meeting titled "Program Response to Patient Relapse," held on July 15, 2009, along with quantitative and qualitative information about the patterns and types of discharge policies, which factors influence them, and how the culture of drug abuse treatment and the personnel interact with this issue. Some existing data on the discharging of relapsed patients are identified.

Blending addiction research and practice: strategies for technology transfer.

Consistent with traditional conceptions of technology transfer, efforts to translate substance abuse and addiction research into treatment practice have typically relied on the passive dissemination of research findings. The large gap between addiction research and practice, however, indicates that there are many barriers to successful technology transfer and that dissemination alone is not sufficient to produce lasting changes in addiction treatment. To accelerate the translation of research into practice, the National Institute on Drug Abuse launched the Blending Initiative in 2001.

Why do we need an Addiction supplement focused on methamphetamine?

Methamphetamine is a substantial public health problem in many communities in the United States and in other parts of the world. In order to bring new knowledge about methamphetamine to policy makers, clinicians and researchers, this volume has compiled a set of articles containing new information about the drug and its effects. The articles contain information presented by researchers at two special methamphetamine meetings sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2005.

Drugs of abuse and the aging brain.

Substance abuse among older adults has received little attention in the past, presumably because this population has traditionally accounted for only a small percentage of the drug abuse problem in the United States. The aging of the baby boomer generation (born 1946-1964), however, will soon swell the ranks of older adults and dramatically alter the demography of American society. Several observations suggest that this expansion will likely be accompanied by a precipitous increase in the abuse of drugs, including prescription medications and illicit substances, among older adults.