The adoption of alcohol pharmacotherapies in the Clinical Trials Network: The influence of research network participation.

Organizational participation in clinical research may lead to adoption of the intervention by treatment agencies, but it is not known whether research involvement enhances innovativeness beyond the specific interventions that are tested. The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Clinical Trials Network (CTN) is a platform for considering this research question. To date, the CTN has not conducted research on medications for alcohol use disorders (AUDs), so greater adoption of innovative AUD pharmacotherapies by CTN-affiliated programs would suggest an added value of research network participation. Using longitudinal data from a pooled sample of CTN and non-CTN publicly funded treatment programs, the authors investigate adoption of tablet naltrexone and acamprosate over a 2-year period. CTN-affiliated programs were more likely to have adopted tablet naltrexone and acamprosate at 24-month follow-up, net of the effects of a range of organizational characteristics.

These results shed light on what may be a powerful and efficient tool to encourage the adoption of evidence-based practices in substance abuse treatment. Although NIDA’s CTN required a large monetary investment to support a research agenda that now includes more than 25 multisite clinical trials, the concept of building interorganizational networks of treatment programs that allow for information sharing may be a less costly intervention that can still yield benefits in terms of innovation adoption. Future research should consider whether these types of networks that are based on shared interests rather than research involvement can also facilitate greater innovation adoption.