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The CTN Dissemination Library is a digital repository of resources created by and about NIDA’s National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN). It provides a single point of access to research findings and other materials approved for dissemination across the CTN and to the larger community of providers, researchers, policy-makers, and the public. By making research findings available in multiple formats, the Library helps bridge the gap between science and practice.

Starting in 2026, the CTN Library is expanding with two new services: 1) Hosting the NIDA CTN Common Data Elements (CDE) website; 2) Developing research dissemination materials in collaboration with study teams (including print materials, online trainings, videos, podcasts, digital toolkits, and more).

Read all about these new services in this poster presented at the 2026 CTN Annual Scientific & Steering Committee Meeting.

A quarter century ago, research-to-practice gaps in addiction care gained national attention and prompted formation of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) and formalization of the Addiction Technology Transfer Centers (ATTCs). Soon after, the RE-AIM explanatory framework was developed to enable examination of the public health impact of healthcare innovations—with its domain of adoption corresponding most directly to the CTN’s mission of transferring research results of its trials to the addiction workforce. A node-level CTN-ATTC collaboration, the Western States CTN Node Training and Dissemination Workgroup, seeks to contribute to this national mission. Our workgroup—currently comprising leadership of the Western States CTN Node, Northwest ATTC, Pacific Southwest ATTC, and CTN Dissemination Library—promotes workforce adoption of scientific advancements in addiction care via two long-running universal technical assistance activities: a semi-annual webinar series, and a monthly column in the ATTC Messenger newsletter.

In this commentary, we provide historical context for the salience of bridging research-to-practice gaps, and then describe the origin of this workgroup, detail its pair of long-running universal technical assistance activities intended to increase adoption of healthcare advancements among addiction workforce members, and offer metrics concerning the audiences attracted over a recent five-year period. In celebration of the CTN’s 25th anniversary, we also reflect on the value of this multi-institutional partnership for the Western States CTN Node and propose a dissemination agenda to prompt future efforts whereby the CTN mission may be more fully and effectively achieved.

American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations are disproportionately affected by substance use disorders (SUDs) and related health disparities in contrast to other ethnoracial groups in the United States. Over the past 20 years, substantial resources have been allocated to NIDA’s National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) to disseminate and implement effective SUD treatments in communities. However, we know little about how these resources have benefitted AI/AN peoples with SUD who arguably experience the greatest burden of SUDs. This review aims to determine lessons learned about AI/AN substance use and treatment outcomes in the CTN and the role of racism and Tribal identity.

The authors conducted a scoping review informed by the Joanna Briggs framework and PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews checklist and explanation. The study team conducted the search strategy within the CTN Dissemination Library and nine additional databases for articles published between 2000 and 2021. The review included studies if they reported results for AI/AN participants. Two reviewers determined study eligibility.

A systematic search yielded 13 empirical articles and six conceptual articles. Themes from the 13 empirical articles included: (1) Tribal Identity: Race, Culture, and Discrimination; (2) Treatment Engagement: Access and Retention; (3) Comorbid Conditions; (4) HIV/Risky Sexual Behaviors; and (5) Dissemination. The most salient theme was Tribal Identity: Race, Culture, and Discrimination, which was present in all articles that included a primary AI/AN sample (k = 8). Themes assessed but not identified for AI/AN peoples were Harm Reduction, Measurement Equivalence, Pharmacotherapy, and Substance Use Outcomes. The conceptual contributions used AI/AN CTN studies as exemplars of community-based and Tribal participatory research (CBPR/TPR).

Conclusions: CTN studies conducted with AI/AN communities demonstrate culturally congruent methods, including CBPR/TPR strategies; consideration/assessment of cultural identity, racism, and discrimination; and CBPR/TPR informed dissemination plans. Although important efforts are underway to increase AI/AN participation in the CTN, future research would benefit from strategies to increase participation of this population. Such strategies include reporting AI/AN subgroup data; addressing issues of cultural identity and experiences of racism; and adopting an overall effort for research aimed at understanding barriers to treatment access, engagement, utilization, retention, and outcomes for both treatment and research disparities for AI/AN populations.

Timely and wide translation of NIDA’s science and research findings is necessary to educate health providers (HCPs) and to inform policy makers and youth and their families, and it ultimately improves adolescent and public health.

NIDA’s web portals, such as NIDAMED, CTN Dissemination Initiative, Research Studies/Translational Research Resources (Drug Topics), NIDA for Teens, and CTN Dissemination Library disseminate empirically based evidence regarding adolescent substance use.

Dissemination of scientific information involves active partnerships with researchers; professional organizations, youth and their families; and educators and policy makers, to ensure bidirectional exchange and to inform a constantly evolving process to make relevant information readily available in user-friendly and cost-free formats. This article provides an overview of all of thee approaches to dissemination and sets the stage for a call to HCPs to educate youth on the dangers of substance use and to treat youth who may have already developed a substance use disorder.

Hispanics significantly underutilize substance abuse treatment and are at greater risk for poor treatment outcomes and dropout. Two decades of research from the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) offers an opportunity to increase our understanding in how to address the disparities experienced by Hispanics in substance abuse treatment.

A scoping review was utilized to determine what has been learned from the CTN about Hispanic populations with substance use disorder. A systematic search was conducted within the CTN Dissemination Library and nine databases. Potentially relevant studies were independently assessed by two reviewers for inclusion.

Twenty-four studies were included in the review. Results identified issues in measurement, characteristics of Hispanic substance use, effective interventions, and gaps for future research. Characteristics that interfere with treatment participation were also identified including low employment rates, less likelihood of having insurance, lower rates of internet access, and increased travel time to services, as were treatment issues such as high rates of alcohol and tobacco use. Effective interventions were identified; however, the effectiveness of these interventions may be limited to specific factors.

Conclusions: Despite efforts to improve inclusion of minority populations, Hispanics remain underrepresented in clinical trials. Future research including Hispanic populations should examine measurement equivalence and consider how cultural and historical experiences, as well as patient characteristics, influence utilization of services. Finally, more studies are needed that examine the impact of structural factors that act as barriers to treatment access and engagement and result in significant disparities in treatment outcomes.

Black participants experience a disproportionate burden of substance-related disabilities and premature death relative to other racial/ethnic groups, highlighting the need for additional research. The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN), a research platform for multisite behavioral, pharmacological, and integrated trials designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a substance use treatments in community settings with diversified patient populations, provides a wealth of research knowledge on substance use. Although CTN trials have enrolled over 5,000 Black individuals since its inception in 2000, there has been no synthesis of the findings, discussion of the implications, or suggestions for future research for Black individuals. Members of the Minority Interest Group of the CTN conducted a scoping review of published research on Black participants in CTN trials. The primary source for identifying articles was the CTN Dissemination Library, with studies also identified through PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. Studies were included if the sample was more than 75% Black and/or specific findings pertaining to Black participants were reported. The review yielded 50 articles, with studies that mostly focused on baseline characteristics, followed by substance use treatment outcomes, HIV/risky sex behaviors, retention, comorbid conditions and measurement issues.

This review highlighted the importance of several issues that are critical to understanding and treating substance misuse among Black people, such as the characteristics of Black people entering treatment, measurement equivalence, and engaging/retaining adolescents and young adults in treatment. There is still a continued need to identify the most effective treatments for Black individuals who use substances. The CTN offers several untapped opportunities to further advance research on Black individuals who use substances (e.g., secondary analyses on publicly available data).

The Therapeutic Education System (TES), an Internet version of the Community Reinforcement Approach plus prize-based motivational incentives, is one of few empirically supported technology-based interventions. To date, however, there has not been a study exploring differences in substance use outcomes or acceptability of TES among racial/ethnic subgroups. This study uses data from a multisite (N=10) effectiveness study of TES to explore whether race/ethnicity subgroups (White [n=267], Black/African American [n=112], and Hispanic/Latino [n=55]) moderate the effect of TES. Generalized linear mixed models were used to test whether abstinence, retention, social functioning, coping, craving, or acceptability differed by racial/ethnic subgroup. Findings demonstrated that race/ethnicity did not moderate the effect of TES versus TAU on abstinence, retention, social functioning, or craving. A three-way interaction (treatment, race/ethnicity, and abstinence status at study entry) showed that TES was associated with greater coping scores among non-abstinent White participants (p=.008) and among abstinent Black participants (p<.001). Acceptability of the TES intervention, although high overall, was significantly different by race/ethnicity subgroup with white participants reporting lower acceptability of TES compared to Black (p=.006) and Hispanic/Latino (p=.008) participants.

Conclusions: Findings from this study lend additional support for the use of technology-based interventions in the treatment of substance use disorders. The acceptability of Internet-delivered interventions among racial/ethnic minority populations suggests promise for increasing access to services and reducing disparities in treatment outcomes. In this large multisite national study, racial/ethnic subgroups received similar benefit from Internet-based CRA/CM and reported high rates of acceptability, with Black participants reporting the highest rates of acceptability. TES should be considered as an additional tool to support usual care in outpatient treatment programs among diverse subgroups of patients.

Related protocols: CTN-0044

The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) is a practice-based research network that partners academic researchers with community based substance use disorder (SUD) treatment programs designed primarily to conduct effectiveness trials of promising interventions. A secondary goal of the CTN is to widely disseminate results of these trials and thus improve the quality of SUD treatment in the U.S. Drawing on data from 156 CTN programs, this study examined the associated between involvement in CTN protocols and overall treatment quality measured by a comprehensive index of 35 treatment services. Negative binomial regression models show that treatment programs participating in a greater number of CTN protocols had significantly higher levels of treatment quality, an association that held after controlling for key organizational characteristics. Given that protocol participation was positively associated with quality of treatment, the question remains about how to successfully translate this knowledge and skill base to community-based treatment programs that are not directly involved in clinical research. The CTN has undertaken a number of dissemination initiatives to do just that, including the NIDA/SAMHSA Blending Initiative and the CTN Dissemination Library, though there have been few studies examining the direct impact of these dissemination activities on the quality of treatment services within and outside the CTN.

Conclusions: At their core, practice-based research networks, such as the CTN, offer community based clinicians the opportunity to bring innovation to and to address problems encountered in everyday treatment practice. They also provide an opportunity to identify barriers to implementation and to tailor implementation strategies to meet the real world needs of community-based treatment programs. However there are significant strides to be made in disseminating knowledge, skills, and training to programs that do not actively participate in clinical research in the wider treatment community. These findings contribute to the growing body of research on the role of practice-based research networks in promoting health care quality.

Substance abuse is a leading cause of death and disability throughout the world. The mission of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is to lead the United States in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction. This charge has two critical components: (a) strategic support of research across a broad range of disciplines and (b) rapid, effective dissemination of research results that can improve prevention and treatment efforts, with potential to inform policy. The NIDA National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) and the Blending Initiative are critical elements of this strategy, and the social work field is poised to use these resources to expand its role in the dissemination and implementation of NIDA’s mission.

The article describes the CTN and Blending Initiatives in general, the CTN Dissemination Library, CTN Data Share, and each of the Blending Initiative training products developed to date. NIDA, the Blending Initiative, and the CTN offer great promise toward implementation of evidence-based practices, and social workers are encouraged to seize every opportunity to initiate and remain engaged in substance abuse treatment, research, and training activities.

The role of social media tools is rapidly expanding and radically changing the way we communicate with one another. The purpose of this guide is to provide people within the NIDA CTN with a basic understanding of social media and tips for navigation.

While there are many social media tools, this guide is limited to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs. Whether you choose to engage in social media or only to watch from the sidelines, it is important to be aware of what is already happening. This guide provides descriptions of each medium, as well as practical examples from the CTN and beyond.

HIV continues to be a significant problem among substance users and their sexual partners in the United States. The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) offers a national platform for effectiveness trials of HIV interventions in community substance abuse treatment programs. This article presents the HIV-related activities of the CTN during its first 10 years. While emphasizing CTN HIV protocols, this article reviews the (1) HIV context for this work; (2) the collaborative process among providers, researchers, and National Institute on Drug Abuse CTN staff, on which CTN HIV work was based; (3) results of CTN HIV protocols and HIV secondary analyses in CTN non-HIV protocols; and (4) implications for future HIV intervention effectiveness research in community substance abuse treatment programs.

Conclusions: While the feasibility of engaging frontline providers in this research is highlighted, the limitations of small to medium effect sizes and weak adoption and sustainability in everyday practice are also discussed.

Related protocols: CTN-0010, CTN-0013, CTN-0015, CTN-0017, CTN-0018, CTN-0019, CTN-0032

This presentation provides an overview of the origins of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network, established by NIDA in part to address the issues raised by an IOM report decrying the “gap” between research and treatment. After the CTN was established, NIDA and SAMHSA came together to launch the Blending Initiative, which featured regular Blending Conferences, a greater focus on interactions with single state agency directors to help facilitate broader adoption of research-supported treatment, and the development of Blending Teams and Blending Products to operationalize implementation of research findings in the field. A description of each of the currently available Blending Products is provided, as well as an introduction to two new Blending Products coming soon. Research on the CTN’s impact in the adoption of new evidence-based practices is also presented, along with a showcase of resources those interested in implementation might find useful on the NIDA CTN web site, the online CTN Dissemination Library, and the CTN Datashare page.

This 12-page brochure provides an overview of the first decade of research in the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network. The CTN was started in 1999 to help bridge the gap between research and practice in the drug and alcohol abuse field, helping move evidence-based treatments into adoption in community treatment centers. The CTN’s innovative approach blends the skills and experience of community treatment providers and academic researchers in collaborative partnerships (“Nodes”) that offer patients better access to scientifically tested treatments. In the first 10 years, the CTN has fueled a cultural shift toward evidence-based care for substance abuse treatment, showing that rigorous and relevant clinical research can be carried out directly in CTPs and can address a broad range of addictive disorders. Some of the most effective protocols include those about buprenorphine, a pharmacotherapy for opiate addiction; contingency management/motivational incentives; and motivational interviewing.

The brochure also describes several CTN-related projects, such as the NIDA/SAMHSA Blending Initiative, which has developed several products to assist in the dissemination and training for some of the CTN’s successful treatment protocols, and the CTN Dissemination Library, which is a digital repository of resources and downloadable materials by and about the CTN. The CTN will continue to evolve and is poised to examine a variety of innovative approaches in its next decade, all with the ultimate goal of getting the best treatments to those who need them.

This presentation begins with an overview of the history of dissemination-focused committees in the CTN, beginning with the Dissemination Subcommittee, started in 2001, which over time has evolved into the present-day Research Utilization Committee (RUC). During the first decade of the CTN, several dissemination and implementation strategies have been employed, including the publication of numerous articles about technology transfer, platform dissemination/implementation studies, NIDA-SAMHSA Blending Team Products and Blending Conferences, and a variety of regional dissemination workshops, local trainings, and interactive websites.

Additionally, the CTN Dissemination Library was launched in 2003 to provide CTN members and the public with a single point of access to research findings and other materials approved for dissemination throughout the CTN and to the larger community of providers, researchers, and policy-makers. Use of the Blending Products, trainings and workshops, and the Library have grown steadily in the past several years. The presentation ends with suggestions for ways the RUC can continue to help “close the gap” between treatment and research.

This presentation provides an overview of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network’s first ten years. It begins with the premise for the CTN’s initiation: to improve addiction treatment using randomized, controlled clinical trials to generate evidence-based treatments that are then implemented in community treatment programs via engagement with providers participating in the research process. It then describes the infrastructure of the CTN, the research done thus far (including multiple secondary and platform studies), the overall utilization of that research (including dissemination strategies and the CTN Dissemination Library), and plans for the next decade of the CTN.

The future mission of the CTN is to continue to help bring drug abuse treatment into mainstream medical practice, maintain a flexible research strategy/portfolio, help facilitate research utilization through better training platforms for the clinical workforce, and address more research questions that directly impact clinical practice.