Florida Node of The Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a competing continuation proposal for the Florida Node of NIDA's CTN. The aim of the Node is to develop and implement protocols that test the effectiveness of treatments across a broad range of community-based treatment settings with diverse patient populations, and to disseminate knowledge in a manner that improves the practice of drug abuse treatment in the Node, Puerto Rico and the nation. The partnership funded by this grant is led by the University of Miami-Center for Family Studies, with its considerable clinical trials, multi-site, HIV+, race/ethnicity, and drug abuse treatment expertise, serving as the Regional Research and Training Center (RRTC). The Florida Node governance represents strong bi-directional collaboration between the RRTC and CTPs. Collaborators in this partnership are five Florida CTPs that are among the largest and most respected in the State, representing the north (Gateway in Jacksonville), west (PAR in the Tampa/St Petersburg), East (Center for Drug Free Living in Orlando) and south (The Village in Miami; Spectrum in Broward County) parts of the State. Accounting for 45% of Florida's drug abuse treatment dollars, and with the capacity to serve 20,000 patients, these agencies offer exceptional diversity of treatment modalities, patient racial and ethnic profiles, and drug abusing and addicted populations. The Node also includes strong collaborative relationships with the Florida Single State Agency Director, the Florida ATTC, and the Florida provider association. As our progress report shows, the past 4 years have yielded major accomplishments in our work with these partners. Additionally, this proposal presents a number of ancillary relationships to expand the diversity of treatment settings, including primary care and social service settings represented by two large Miami-Dade County based primary care networks, a methadone treatment network, a government-run drug abuse treatment network, a close collaboration with the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands ATTC, and a network of providers in Puerto Rico, among others. The infrastructure we have established over the past 4 years have allowed us to meet the challenges we had originally confronted (e.g., communication and collaboration across geographic distance) and have allowed us to successfully implement six CTN protocols including leading a large trial of family therapy for substance abusing adolescents, (CTN-0014), and co-leading the first ever multi-site effectiveness trial of drug abuse treatment with a Spanish-speaking population (CTN-0021). A concept, ideally suited for the CTN, proposes to test two strategies in the dissemination of an efficacious HIV intervention.