The Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) Network emerged as a federally-funded network of 11 regional centers coordinating with a National Office in order to help community-based treatment programs adopt the latest treatments.
That originally came in the form of funding more professionals, facilitating training courses, building partnerships with education and research institutions, and developing cross-discipline curriculums. Like many organizations and projects in this era, it sought to work across disciplines that interacted with addiction, like nursing, criminal justice, social work, and psychology.
Over time, the network also began focusing on supporting change in systems and organizations rather than just educating clinicians on the latest tools and protocols. A recurring theme in information-sharing projects is that simply presenting information doesn’t actually lead to long-term changes in practice. Producing change in organizations is a field unto itself called Implementation Science that grew in popularity through the 90s.
Wait, Mank, isn’t your website just presenting information? That was already presented?
Shut up. This is different. Shut up. Moving on.
On average, it takes an average of 17 years to integrate a new medical intervention into standard healthcare practice. That lines up with what a professor once gave me as a rule of thumb: assume that American protocols are 5-10 years behind the international standards and assume the international standards are 5-10 years behind the research consensus for state-of-the-art approaches. Some of the evidence-based interventions included motivational interviewing, contingency management, and buprenorphine treatment. CM is among my favorite proposals to address addiction as both social policy and individual assistance.
The ATTC Network remains one of the longest running public efforts to translate evidence from research into clinical practice.