Back to Institute Archive" Institute Awarded $1.5 Million Federal Grant to Improve Drug Treatment Services and Research"
Efforts by researchers at the University of South Florida's Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute to improve substance abuse prevention and treatment services for individuals involved with the criminal justice system have been bolstered by a three-year, $1.5 million grant. The Suncoast Practice/Research Collaborative project is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. It is being conducted in partnership with key criminal justice agencies, consumers, the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association (FADAA), and three community-based treatment providers in the Tampa Bay area - the Agency for Community Treatment Services (ACTS), the Drug Abuse Comprehensive Coordinating Office (DACCO), and Operation PAR, as well as the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. The project is aimed at bridging gaps between science and practice by creating more effective partnerships between researchers, policy-makers, and treatment providers.
According to Dr. Roger H. Peters, Principal Investigator on the grant, "recent trends, including changes in the way substance abuse treatment services are financed and delivered, and an increasingly ethnically diverse drug involved population, have widened those gaps. The result is that treatment providers and criminal justice professionals have become even more isolated from researchers, and therefore are less likely to benefit from advances in treatment and prevention."
The Suncoast Practice/Research Collaborative partners are developing an integrated network to identify, share and apply information to support and promote effective substance abuse treatment services in criminal justice settings. The recent completion of a comprehensive needs assessment has identified several areas where the group will focus its future research.
Under this grant, the group will focus its research on integrated treatment services for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders, gender-sensitive treatment approaches, and family treatment approaches. The project will test the effectiveness of a model for disseminating "best practices" approaches in community-based substance abuse treatment agencies.