Ensuring evidence-based treatments are delivered with a high degree of fidelity is an important aspect of transporting these practices to community-based treatment providers. Just as training is critical for clinicians who plan to deliver the Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (A-CRA), a process of training and vetting individuals who assess sessions for fidelity also is critical. This article describes the training process for session raters who assess fidelity of A-CRA during the clinician training and certification process. A-CRA is currently being implemented in 32 independent community-based agencies as part of a large initiative funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. Keywordstraining; treatment fidelity; adolescent; treatment; A-CRA The importance of treatment fidelity has been recognized for nearly three decades (Sechrest, West, Phillips, Redner, & Yeaton, 1979;Yeaton & Sechrest, 1981). Moreover, it remains an important issue for many of today's health services researchers and practitioners (Barber et al., 2006;Borrelli et al., 2005;Orwin, 2000;Waltz, Addis, Koerner, & Jacobsen, 1993), especially in light of the growing emphasis on the use of evidence-based treatment (EBT; Garner, in press; Institute of Medicine [IOM], 1998;Miller, Sorensen, Selzer, & Brigham, 2006;Weisner et al., 2004). Confidence in a study's internal validity is increased when there is good documentation that the interventions under study have been implemented as planned. Additionally, continuing to measure fidelity is important as interventions are transported to practice, given it is challenging to achieve the levels of intervention fidelity attained during randomized clinical trials. Indeed, Henggeler and his colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina have demonstrated the importance of assessing the degree of implementation in studies examining the transportability of Multisystemic Therapy (MST;Henggeler, Schoenwald, Borduin, Rowland, & Cunningham, 1998). For example, Henggeler, Melton, Brondino, Scherer, and Hanley (1997) Barber and colleagues (1996) described the development of a fidelity instrument for individual drug counseling (IDC) for treatment of cocaine dependence. Using a seven-point scale, three raters assessed 43 items based on the main components described in the treatment manual. These measures were used to assess both 'adherence' (i.e., extent to which intervention components are delivered as prescribed in the treatment manual), and 'competence' (i.e., qualitative measure of the skillfulness in which intervention components are delivered). Rater training included a practice period during which raters met weekly to rate 72 tapes, followed by discussion about how they were using the scale. Raters then rated 62 new tapes in order to assess interrater reliability. Overall, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for adherence and competence ratings were acceptable and ranged from .70-.89 and .55-.85, respectively. In a similar study, Carroll and colleagues (2000) describe...

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Drug Use and Misuse: A Community Health Perspective provides students with an introduction to the biological, psychological, and legal aspects of drug use and misuse through the lens of community health and discusses the impact of drug use and misuse on community health. The book contains eight distinct chapters addressing the background of drug use and misuse, including key terms, as well as an introduction to different categories of drugs including gateway drugs, opioids, and prescription drugs, and a conclusion that describes evidence-based prevention and treatment models. Originally developed for use in the popular undergraduate survey course “Drug Use and Abuse” taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the book is aimed at students learning about community health and the effects of drug use in a variety of contexts, such as survey courses for pharmacology, psychology, or public health.