The development and evaluation of effective strategies for transporting evidence-based practices to community-based clinicians has become a research and policy priority. Using multisystemic therapy programs as a platform, an experimental design examined the capacity of an Intensive Quality Assurance (IQA) system to promote therapist implementation of contingency management (CM) for adolescent marijuana abuse. Participants included 30 therapists assigned to Workshop Only (WSO) versus IQA training conditions, and 70 marijuana-abusing youths and their caregivers who were treated by these clinicians. Analyses showed that IQA was more effective than WSO at increasing practitioner implementation of CM cognitive-behavioral techniques in the short-term based on youth and caregiver reports, and these increases were sustained based on youth reports. On the other hand, IQA did not increase therapist use of CM monitoring techniques relative to WSO, likely because of an unanticipated ceiling effect. Both sets of findings contribute to the emerging literature on the transport of evidence-based practice to real-world clinical settings.

Athletes are exposed to unique stressors that often negatively impact the way they think, behave, and feel in athletic, academic, and social domains. The Optimum Performance Program in Sports (TOPPS), an adaptation of Family Behavior Therapy, is an innovative approach to optimization science that has demonstrated positive outcomes in student-athletes evidencing substance use disorders. However, this approach has yet to be evaluated in athletes who are interested in optimizing their mental health and sport performance, but have no indication of pathology. We describe the administration of TOPPS in a female student-athlete who presented for intervention with no assessed mental health pathology. Although experimental methodology was uncontrolled, many of the methodological features in this examination were advanced. Treatment integrity was reliably assessed and the athlete demonstrated significant improvements in psychometrically validated measurements of mental health and sport performance from baseline to 5-months post-treatment, including psychiatric domains (somatization, obsessivecompulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism), relationships with teammates, family members, coaches, and peers, and measures of sport performance. Future directions are reported in light of the results.

In bridging the science to service gap, effective, yet practical, strategies are needed for supporting practitioner implementation of evidence-based treatments. The development and preliminary evaluation of an adherence monitoring system to support clinician fidelity to an evidence-based treatment for substance-abusing adolescents was tested for community-based practitioners. Session tapes were monitored for adherence to a family-based approach to CM (CM/FB) for 27 practitioners during baseline, post-workshop, and follow-up periods. Approximately half of the practitioners were randomized to receive intensive quality assurance following a CM/FB workshop as part of a larger study. Findings supported the clinical feasibility of the developed system as well as the face and content validity, reliability, and concurrent validity. Future directions are discussed in light of these results, including instructions for the use of the developed system to efficiently train clinicians to adequate fidelity.

This study demonstrates application of a novel experimental approach to intervention development and demonstrated the importance of parent involvement when delivering contingency management for minority youth weight loss. Lessons learned from contingency management program implementation are also discussed in order to inform practice.

The current study examined the sensitivity of the Comprehensive Trail Making Test (CTMT Reynolds) to neurocognitive deficits in adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Participants included 60 adolescents, 30 who had sustained TBI and 30 healthy controls (HC) that were individually matched to the TBI sample on age, gender, ethnicity, and geographical region. For both the TBI and HC groups the mean age was 15.0 years (S.D.=2.3 years, range=11-19). The TBI group had a mean IQ of 81.7 (S.D.=14.9), had sustained moderate to severe brain injury, and was assessed an average of 21.1 months (S.D.=20.7) following injury. The TBI group performed approximately 2 standard deviations below the control sample mean on each of the five CTMT trails as well as on the composite index and these differences were significant (p<.001). Significant correlations were present between the CTMT trails and clinical variables associated with brain injury severity. Finally, receiver operating characteristic analyses indicated good classification of the TBI and control cases for the CTMT, although some variability in classification accuracy was present among the various trails. Results suggest that the CTMT is sensitive to TBI in adolescents but continued research is needed with larger samples of individuals with TBI and other types of neurological disorders to further establish the present findings.