Implementing Evidence-Based Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment? Try The Change Book

[Want help implementing evidence-based practices to improve adolescent substance abuse treatment delivery in your jurisdiction? Laurie J. Krom has just the tool for treatment providers. -Ed.]
 
We know that addiction is a devastating disease. We’ve seen the effects of addiction in society, in our personal lives, and, of course, in our work. Yet, despite the ravages caused by addiction, and new discoveries in the science of addiction, much valuable, evidence-based information has not reached or has not yet been implemented by practitioners.
 
As a result, “… individuals who access addictions treatment will often not receive the interventions that current research indicates are the most likely to assist them in achieving positive outcomes” (CSAT, Strengthening Professional Identity).

 
Why can’t we implement best practices more easily?
 
The challenges are familiar:

• Inadequate time to plan and carry out the initiatives in ways that respect the organization's size, culture, and complexity.
• Lack of critical information about the systems asked to adopt new behaviors, including the impact of new policies and procedures on staff, supervisors, and consumers.
• Lack of knowledge of the many barriers that tend to arise, including human resistance to change and misguided judgment, and of effective ways of overcoming and circumventing those barriers.
• A resulting tendency toward autocratic, top-down, “sink-or-swim” change processes, and the disruption that is a natural effect of those processes.

 Hard work, in other words, is not enough.
 
The Change Book can help.
 
Nearly 10 years ago, the Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) Network recognized, through our efforts to promote the use of best practices, that change initiatives are complex endeavors and can be littered with hurdles.
 
In order to advance the field and accelerate the process of integrating research into practice, we developed a step-by-step guide documenting a universal approach to carrying out such change initiatives. This guide, called The Change Book: A Blueprint for Technology Transfer, provides essential research on the change process in a practical format that teaches agencies how to successfully engage in and implement initiatives that result in lasting systems change.
 
How does The Change Book help?
 
The Change Book includes the principles, strategies, activities and steps that will take you through a well thought-out, multidimensional change initiative from inception of the plan to implementation and evaluation. To be effective, a change effort must be relevant, timely, clear, credible, multifaceted, continuous, and bi-directional. These principles guide not only your entire change initiative but all elements that make up your initiative. Your strategies and activities must also be relevant, timely, clear, credible, and so on. The Change Book shows you how to do this!
 
The book gives you strategies to use at multiple levels of your organization, and includes an activities “idea list” providing suggestions for activities that, when used in combination, assist in the change process. Once you understand the principles and are familiar with the strategies and activities, you are ready to start your plan.
 
The Change Book outlines the ten steps that allow you to identify your problem, determine your targets, and think through your plan. It also contains questions to answer for each step that will lead you to the creation of a well thought-out, multidimensional plan of your own.
 
Finally, in order to make The Change Book as useful and practical as possible, the publication comes paired with a workbook that you can use through your change initiative.
 
Where Do I Get The Change Book?
The ATTC Network has used The Change Book since 2000 to assist organizations with change processes throughout the country. You can get your free copy of The Change Book here.
 
If you have additional questions or would like assistance in using The Change Book in your organization, please contact your local ATTC Regional Center.
 
Related Posts:

• Handy Reference List for Evidence-Based Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Models
• Juvenile Drug Courts: Evidence-Based Practices

 
Laurie Krom, MS, is Director of the ATTC National Office.