Promoting Awareness for Motivational Incentives in Addiction Treatment (PAMI).

This session of the 2008 NIDA Blending Conference featured two presentations about the NIDA/SAMHSA Blending Team Product, “Promoting Awareness for Motivational Incentives” (PAMI). The first provides an overview of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) and its unique features and key tasks. The NIDA/SAMHSA Blending Process was set up to help move the research from the CTN into the world of clinical practice, developing “Dissemination Products” that are released at the same time the related research papers are published. There have been five Blending Teams so far, each of which is described here. The PAMI team was tasked to create materials to increase awareness about Motivational Incentives (MI) that incorporated examples from the Motivational Incentives for Enhanced Drug Abuse Recovery (MIEDAR) CTN protocol. Outcomes from the MIEDAR study are included at the end of this presentation.

The second presentation in the session, by Maxine Stitzer, focuses on why Motivational Incentives is an intervention worth adopting. It describes how MI works, using negative urines as objective evidence and providing immediate rewards (vouchers or a drawing for prizes) for negative urinalyses, and describes the scientific evidence supporting this intervention as an effective way to encourage prolonged abstinence in patients. It also describes the “fishbowl” method for prize-drawings, and the ways this intervention can be implemented at low cost. Though outcomes from the CTN MIEDAR study, and other MI research, have been positive, this intervention is still infrequently used. Challenges to adoption are discussed, along with suggestions of why overcoming implementation barriers is worthwhile.

Related protocols: CTN-0006, CTN-0007