Bridging the research-practice gap in adolescent substance abuse treatment: The case of Brief Strategic Family Therapy.

This article presents an empirically validated intervention, Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT), for the treatment of adolescent drug abusers. The BSFT intervention steps and program format are presented. Challenges to implementation in community treatment settings are discussed to identify factors that may facilitate or block the integration of BSFT into community practice settings. In particular, this discussion explores how three critical aspects of community treatment programs — program philosophy, program structure, and cost/funding — influence the blending of BSFT into community treatment practice. The work presented in this article is based on collaborative relationships developed through the CTN (protocol CTN-0014), bringing together the experiences of community treatment providers and university-based researchers to discuss bridging the research-practice gap around BSFT for adolescent drug abusers.

Related protocols: CTN-0014