Conducting trials in community settings: The provider perspective

Providers and their treatment programs are the focus of efforts to translat e research into practice. In the best of partnerships, they are more than t he recipients of research efforts, because they are actively involved in de veloping and evaluating healthy links between practice and research. This a rticle reports on experiences in a multisite methamphetamine treatment tria l funded in October of 1998 by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. Th e goal of the trial is to generate knowledge about how a comprehensive trea tment protocol developed: by the Matrix Center in-los Angeles can be effect ively transferred to the community drug treatment system. The Matrix model provides a three-times-per-week outpatient treatment experience that combin es behavioral, educational, and 12-Step counseling techniques. When complet e, the study will compare outcomes of the 16-week Matrix program with the u sual treatment offered by the programs at the eight participating sites. Th e UCLA Drug Abuse Research Center and the Matrix Institute on Addictions co ordinate the trial. This article describes factors that have fostered or hi ndered the development of this partnership. These factors can be divided in to three temporal phases, although the circumstances presented may occur at any time during the research process. The first set of factors affecting t he development of a healthy research-to-practice relationship exists prior to the establishment of that relationship. A second set of circumstances oc curs at the initiation df the collaborative enterprise, and the third set o f factors is more involved in the development and maintenance of ongoing pr oductive collaboration between researchers and providers.