We will be testing the efficacy of a complementary treatment and community based multicomponent chemical abuse, relapse, and HIV prevention program for recovering addicts. Study participants will consist of 1,440 addicts entering the State Comprehensive Detoxification/Treatment System. The intervention components of this two program prevention endeavor are: 1) a treatment based, 6 module curriculum assessing probabilities of relapse, appraisals and analysis of the signs of relapse, factors that facilitate relapse, and relapse management; available community resources, formal- informal organizations that can help s/he to stay drug free; and strategies to get integrated to non drug use social settings, such as self help groups, family and work. 2) a community based program involving participants, their families, peers and community task forces in a series of activities to facilitate integration of recovering addicts into drug- free social settings and enhance the acquisition of needed resources to stay drug free, and prevent behaviors that place them at risk of getting infected with HIV. The program will work through four community field sites staffed by trained community integrators and social workers within the San Juan metropolitan area. The assessment comprises a control group, participants that receive only the treatment based program, and the intervention group where subjects will participate in both the treatment and community based programs. Participants will fill out questionnaires at six month intervals. The process evaluation will document the procedures used to carry out the project, the degree to which the original design was followed and problems encountered and how they were resolved. Analysis of variance techniques as well as regression techniques will be used to assess the effectiveness of the community based intervention model. Multiple regression using logistic and analysis of variance techniques will be used to examine the effect of the background variables and the main and interactive effect of the experimental conditions.
