A longitudinal study of organizational formation, innovation of adoption, and dissemination activities within the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse established the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) to conduct trials of promising substance abuse treatment interventions in diverse clinical settings and to dissemination results of these trials. This article focuses on three dimensions of the CTN’s organizational functioning: First, a longitudinal dataset is used to examine the CTN’s formation as a network of interorganizational interaction among treatment practitioners and researchers. Data indicate strong relationships of interaction and trust, but a decline in problem-centered interorganizational interaction over time. Second, adoption of buprenorphine and motivational incentives among the CTN’s affiliated community treatment programs (CTPs) is examined over three waves of data. Although adoption is found to increase with CTPs’ CTN participation, there is only modest evidence of widespread penetration and implementation. The CTN is fulfilling its goal of increasing the quality of treatment within its constituent CTPs, as indicated by the adoption of these two representative evidence-based practices, however the level of diffusion falls short of what would be expected if these two treatment practices are regarded as “state of the art.” Third, the CTPs’ pursuit of the CTN’s dissemination goals are examined, indicating that such organizational outreach activities are underway and likely to increase innovation diffusion in the future. Innovation implementation remains a strong challenge, and it would appear that successful dissemination by CTP constituents of the CTN rests upon their own adoption and implementation of critical evidence-based practices.