Overview
The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP) is a trade association that started in 1978 for private non-profit addiction programs to advocate for regulatory regimes like uniform insurance coverage. In 2016, they launched the Addiction Industry Directory (AID) as an unsponsored database of members in good standing that pledge to follow the NAATP Code of Ethics.
Provider Members are those licensed to provide treatment services, and Accredited Provider Members are those who specifically achieved accreditation through a body the NAATP recognizes. Supporter Members provide support to treatment services though may not be licensed to deliver services themselves. NAATP Members can login to a listing management system to update their information in real-time, which contrasts with services like FindTreatment.gov which rely on voluntary survey reponses which are issued regularly but not in real-time.
Commentary
It should be noted that the AID has a page dedicated to the benefits of being listed in the directory for its members, in which they report nearly 20,000 page views per month and “prestigious” search engine placement. Many are not aware that the online content space for addiction and recovery services is heavily dominated by search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, which is why almost every time you look something up about addiction or recovery, you’re likely to find a blog or information page hosted by a treatment provider marketing their own services. This doesn’t mean the information you might receive is wrong per se, or that there’s anything particularly suspicious about members listed in the directory, but it does speak to the decentralized nature of information and referrals within recovery spaces. The AID markets itself as a cooperative solution to this:
“Not only does the directory help its members; the members help the directory. Through their inclusion in our archives, distinguished members effectively “vouch for” the credibility of the Addiction Industry Directory and reinforce NAATP’s mission to advance the addiction treatment field. In so doing, they ensure the continued high ranking of the service in search results, pushing other, possibly pseudo directories further down in search results.”
So, there’s a little bit of the ol’ “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” dynamic here.
One of the motivations I had behind this site is to aggregate information about treatment without selling or promoting treatment services, which minimizes the biases that lead some information to be excluded or outdated.