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You have found 81 entries after clicking the GO button or a search link in a hot topic. Sorted by the main topic addressed, the list shows in orange the type of entry, year the original document was published (or if one of our own documents, the year last updated), and the type of file you will download when you click on the title. In blue is the document’s title followed by a brief description.

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STUDY 2014 HTM file
Drugs: international comparators

After seeing how drug policy worked overseas, UK government ministers and officials returned saying, “there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug use”, and that “better health outcomes for drug users cannot be shown to be a direct result of the enforcement approach”.

DOCUMENT 1999 PDF file 321Kb
How to show treatment works

The leader of the drug treatment commissioning advisory body for England gives his views on the data services need to provide in order to convince the commissioners that their treatments really do work.

STUDY 2011 HTM file
Performance-based contracting within a state substance abuse treatment system: a preliminary exploration of differences in client access and client outcomes

In 2007–08 the US state of Maine introduced a new scheme directly linking funding for outpatient treatment services to performance in terms of waiting times and retention, but financial and service delivery impacts were negligible. Were the incentives too weak, or were services already doing as well as they could?

STUDY 2012 HTM file
Using pay for performance to improve treatment implementation for adolescent substance use disorders

How can it be that incentives to therapists improve implementation of a therapy without further helping patients overcome substance use problems? In this US study of young substance users, disappointing results may reflect the inability of time-limited programmes to make an impression on the lives of youngsters subject to powerful influences, including criminal justice intervention.

STUDY 2010 HTM file
A brief image-based prevention intervention for adolescents

Across the sample, a brief face-to-face consultation highlighting how substance use might stop them becoming the sort of young adults they wanted to be generally did not prevent substance use among US high school pupils, but those already using substances were significantly more responsive, suggesting a selective if not a universal prevention role.

STUDY 2004 PDF file 181Kb
Family check-up builds on teachers' abilities to identify problem pupils

Using teachers' ratings to target the families of high-risk pupils, a US study has shown that a few hours spent improving parental monitoring and response to childrens' behaviour can lead two years later to reductions in substance use.

STUDY 2011 HTM file
Cluster randomised trial of the effectiveness of motivational interviewing for universal prevention

Compared to basic drug education, it should at least have moderated current use, but this attempt to deploy motivational interviewing as an across-the-board prevention strategy among college students in London neither did that, nor did it prevent non-users starting to use, negative findings which raise interesting questions.

STUDY 2010 HTM file
Are effects from a brief multiple behavior intervention for college students sustained over time?

At a US university students at first cut back their drinking and cannabis use in response to a brief face-to-face fitness consultation, but the gains were no longer apparent a year after intervention. Yet still at that time they had at least experienced more positive trends in how they felt than students who had just read a fitness brochure.

STUDY 2014 HTM file
Sport participation and alcohol and illicit drug use in adolescents and young adults: a systematic review of longitudinal studies

Does getting involved in sport divert adolescents from getting involved in drug or alcohol use? Perhaps with respect to the less normalised illicit drugs, but maybe not cannabis, and drinking actually seems to increase.

STUDY 2010 HTM file
Project SUCCESS' effects on the substance use of alternative high school students

In what is becoming a pattern, this rigorous, real-world test of a prevention programme conducted by an independent researcher rather than the developer failed to replicate earlier positive results – in this case, in respect of an education/counselling programme for US teenagers diverted from mainstream schooling.


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