$3.5 MILLION GRANT RECOGNIZES COLLABORATION WITH JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

UM Pioneers Teen

Drug Abuse Therapy
   

he National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is funding a new vision to transform the way society deals with drug-involved youth. Howard A. Liddle, Ed.D., at the School of Medicine has had that same vision for 18 years. NIDA has recognized Liddle’s work with a $3.5 million grant to his team.

The Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies are a new national effort to find new ways to stop habitual drug use among teenagers. “The approach creates concrete, pro-social alternatives to the teen’s drug-abusing lifestyle,” says Liddle, who is the principal investigator of the UM program and director of the Center for Treatment Research on Adolescent Drug Abuse.

Investigators from around the nation will collaborate on community-based studies of both drug abuse and juvenile justice. The idea is that if a program shows promise in one city it can quickly be expanded nationwide. Liddle and researchers at nine other institutions from New York to California were selected because of the drug intervention successes they’ve already achieved. Only two institutions focus on youth: the National Research Development Institute in New York and UM. “This grant extends our previous work by focusing on creating, testing, and sharing new research-proven models of working with juvenile justice-involved, drug-using teens,” Liddle says.

The juvenile justice system is a key first step in the UM program. Rather than lock up first-time offenders, court officials refer the teens and their families to Liddle’s center. “We work with the teen, the family, and social systems that impact the adolescent, such as school and the juvenile justice system,” says Liddle. One of the hallmarks of the UM research has been to intervene as early as possible with youthful offenders.

The relationship is so close that Liddle’s colleague Gayle A. Dakof, Ph.D., just received two other National Institutes of Health grants in partnership with Miami-Dade’s criminal justice system. These are among the first Miami-Dade programs to have justice officials directly involved in the research.

Dr. Liddle calls his work multidimensional family therapy because therapists involve many people in the intervention process—including relatives, juvenile court officials, and peers—then they target different aspects of the teen’s life, creating satisfying alternatives to a drug-using lifestyle. That helps families build a network of support that can get kids out of trouble—and keep them drug-free.

Almost 20 years of studies have demonstrated that Liddle’s therapy approach works. The Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment grant can expand the program’s impact. “By transporting these research-based treatments into existing juvenile justice settings,” Liddle says, “we aim to create lasting change in the systems that supervise criminally involved and substance abusing teens.”