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The Center for
Substance Abuse Policy and Research works on the nexus of policy,
practice and research related to treatment for alcohol and drug
dependence. The Center promotes research, education and service
on the public health impacts of alcohol and drug abuse, facilitates
the application of empirical research findings to improve treatment
services, and to develop more effective state and local policies.
The Center hosts
the Oregon Node of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials
Network, as well as the following projects: the Oregon Practice
Improvement Collaborative, the Northwest Frontier Addiction Technology
Transfer Center, the national evaluation for the Paths to Recovery
project, and grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Center
for Substance Abuse Treatment and state and local authorities.
OMIROR is designed to increase access to and improve the quality
of opiate agonist and partial agonist therapies for opiate dependent
individuals in rural counties of Central and Southwestern Oregon.
The primary objectives are to provide Center for Substance Abuse
Training approved training in the use of buprenorphine for the treatment
of opiate dependence to physicians and associated health practitioners
so that rural counties in Central and Southwestern Oregon will be
prepared to offer agonist therapies. The project also links community-based
drug abuse treatment programs with the trained physicians so that
patients who receive agonist therapies also have access to drug
abuse counseling services.
Innovation is a key to quality improvement in all organizations
- and essential to the health and vitality of community-based substance
abuse treatment organizations. Through the CSAT funded Practice
Improvement Collaboratives, the Oregon Practice Improvement Collaborative
(OPIC) supports state and local level initiatives to utilize science
based practices by substance abuse treatment agencies. The OPIC
facilitates activities to inform stakeholders about science based
practices, educates practitioners and agencies on the utilization
of these practices in treatment, consults with agencies and policy
makers on the implementation and sustaining of practices, and conducts
pilot and knowledge adoption studies on issues surrounding the implementation
and sustaining of practices by community-based organizations. The
OPIC stakeholders consist of treatment agency key personnel, investigators,
educators, local and state policy makers, and consumers of treatment
in a collaborative fashion to foster the transfer of science to
service. Evaluation studies in process include the use of client
self assessments as important activities to help engage clients
in treatment, and strategies that support the implementation of
motivational interviewing concepts by clinicians, managers and staff
in treatment agencies.
The Substance
Abuse Policy Center also consults with state and local agencies
in evaluating programs influencing substance abuse treatment. An
example is a collaborative project with the Oregon Office of Mental
Health and Addiction Services where the Center evaluated the data
collection and consultation process the state uses to assess treatment
effectiveness and provide quality improvement assistance for agencies
receiving funds from the State to provide treatment to Oregon residents.
"Recoveries from Severe Mental Illness" is a four-year study, funded
by the National Institute of Mental Health. The project has three
aims: (1) to identify processes, factors, actions, and experiences
that facilitate recovery among people with severe mental illnesses,
(2) to describe participants' reports of how mental health care
providers, and the mental health care system more generally, have
facilitated recovery, and (3) to examine patterns in health care
service use to understand how volume and type of service relate
to participants' reports of symptom levels, functioning, life difficulties,
and life satisfaction. "Gender, Drinking Patterns, Health & Service
Seeking" is a 3-year study, funded by the National Institute of
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The overall aim of the project is
to understand how and why gender differences in drinking patterns
and other health-related practices affect willingness to use different
types of health care services.
- Conducting studies of behavioral, pharmacological, and integrated behavioral and pharmacological treatment interventions of therapeutic effect in rigorous, multi-site clinical trials to determine effectiveness across a broad range of community-based treatment settings and diversified patient populations; and
- Ensuring the transfer of research results to physicians, clinicians, providers, and patients.
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