Disseminating contingency management to increase attendance in two community substance abuse treatment centers: Lessons learned.

Although contingency management (CM) has been shown to be effective in substance use treatments, community adoption has been slow. To increase dissemination of CM into community practice, two community treatment programs, the Mental Health and Mental Retardation of Tarrant County’s Addiction Services Division and Nexus Recovery Center (both in the Texas Node), collaborated with university faculty investigators to design, implement, and evaluate low-cost, prize-based CM interventions delivered by treatment staff using CTN research Nancy Petry’s fishbowl technique (CTN-0006/7, “Motivational Incentives for Enhanced Drug Abuse Recovery: Drug Free/Methadone Clinics”). A pre-post study design was used to evaluate the impact of CM on outpatient group attendance. All clients attending the targeted outpatient groups at both treatment programs were eligible to participate. Group attendance was significantly positively impacted after intervention implementation.

This is one of the first studies demonstrating successful implementation of CM by community treatment program counselors within their existing treatment groups. Many practice lessons were learned during the planning and implementation of the intervention, especially in regards to securing funding, staggering intervention onset, practicing and being monitored, and preparing for a range of possible reactions, both good and bad.