Dissemination of evidence-based behavioral treatments remains a major challenge for researchers, professional organizations, and federal and state agencies. Research oriented doctoral training programs, internship programs, and postdoctoral fellowship programs in clinical psychology typically provide training and supervision in evidence based behavioral practices sufficient to enable trainees to attain competency in these practices. Unfortunately, faculty in these programs, including our own psychology internship and postdoctoral training program, tend to emphasize research productivity above clinical service provision and tend to attract trainees who are interested in pursuing careers in teaching or research rather than service provision. As a result, although graduates of these programs are competent to provide evidence based practice, very few will devote significant if any effort to direct service provision during their professional careers. The current project focuses on the development and evaluation of a curriculum designed to foster broader dissemination of Motivational Interviewing (MI), an evidence-based practice for alcohol and other substance use disorders, by providing training to pre-doctoral interns and postdoctoral fellows in clinical psychology in both the practice and dissemination of this approach.
The aims of this project are: 1) to develop a curriculum to train advanced graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in clinical psychology to competently practice and then disseminate MI for Alcohol and Other Substance Use Disorders to community-based substance abuse treatment providers, and 2) to foster ongoing dissemination of MI in the state of Mississippi and beyond, by a) fully integrating the curriculum into the training program, b) instilling a desire for further dissemination work in trainees, and c) disseminating the curriculum as a model for training. The curriculum will be developed and implemented iteratively over five years using a strategy modeled on the Curriculum Research Framework, a stage model of evidence-based educational curriculum development. In the first year of the proposed project a variety of strategies including a literature review, a web-based survey of MI trainers, a solicitation of sample curricula, syllabi, and workshop agendas, and solicitation of feedback from community providers will be employed to inform the preliminary drafts of the curriculum. At the end of Year 1, a small-scale implementation of the curriculum and preliminary evaluation will be conducted. In Years 2-4, the curriculum will be updated at the beginning of each year followed by full implementation and evaluation of the curriculum. Full implementation includes didactic and supervised practicum training for interns and postdoctoral fellows in MI followed by didactic and supervised practicum training in providing an MI workshop to community providers and supervising their MI practice. In year 5, the curriculum will be disseminated to other clinical psychology training programs. The curriculum developed and disseminated through this project is anticipated to foster greater adoption of evidence based practices. Sluggish dissemination of evidence based behavioral treatments for alcohol and other substance use disorders compromises the quality of care available to patients in many treatment settings. The curriculum proposed in the current project is intended to foster greater collaboration between research-oriented clinical psychology programs, which typically provide thorough training and supervision in evidenced based behavioral treatments, and community providers, who treat the vast majority of patients requiring these treatments, by incorporating training in dissemination and actual dissemination activities into clinical psychology training programs.
| Schumacher, Julie A; Williams, Daniel C; Burke, Randy S et al. (2018) Brief Report: Competency-Based Supervision in Motivational Interviewing for Advanced Psychology Trainees: Targeting an A Priori Benchmark. Train Educ Prof Psychol 12:149-153 |
| Freeman, Andrew J; Schumacher, Julie A; Coffey, Scott F (2015) Social desirability and partner agreement of men's reporting of intimate partner violence in substance abuse treatment settings. J Interpers Violence 30:565-79 |
| Schumacher, Julie A; Coffey, Scott F; Walitzer, Kimberly S et al. (2012) Guidance for New Motivational Interviewing Trainers When Training Addiction Professionals: Findings from a Survey of Experienced Trainers. Motiv Interviewing 1:7-15 |
