Identifying organizational, policy and environmental factors in the adoption of medications in the publicly funded substance abuse treatment system

The Foundation's Substance Abuse Policy Research Program was designed to provide support for investigators to conduct policy research on a variety of subjects directed at helping the country reduce the harm caused by substance abuse.Although pharmacotherapies can improve outcomes for individuals being treated for substance abuse, the adoption of medication-assisted treatments by community-based organizations continues to be low, particularly in the publicly funded treatment sector. A key barrier is the lack of physicians in these settings, which may be the result of organization-level factors, as well as state policies that regulate and fund these organizations. To date, there are few studies that have considered these issues in the context of publicly funded addiction treatment, and it is unclear what is the relative importance of organizational, environmental, and state policy factors in modeling medication adoption. This study will measure the availability of medical staff, the adoption of pharmacotherapies, and the relative importance of perceived policy and organizational barriers to medication adoption. Secondly, this project will estimate models of medication adoption that integrate environmental and organizational measures of perceived policy barriers, medical staff, organizational structure, culture, and resources in order to examine their relative importance as facilitators and barriers to the use of pharmacotherapies in publicly funded treatment organizations. Lastly, the study will examine the associations between medical staff and both organizational and environmental factors, including organizational structure, culture, resources, perceived state policy barriers (including funding policies and regulations), and perceived availability of medical staff in the local labor market.

Grant Details

Amount Awarded $330,992.00

Awarded on: 9/5/2008

Time frame: 10/1/2008 - 9/30/2012

Grant Number: 65111