Culturally Informed Family Based Treatment of Adolescents: A Randomized Trial
Condition: Substance Use Disorders; Risk Behavior; Psychiatric Disorders; Family Dysfunction
MeSH terms: Substance-Related Disorders; Mental Disorders; Problem Behavior
Study type: Interventional
Phase: Phase 2

Summary: 
      This Stage II randomized trial tests Culturally Informed & Flexible Family Based Treatment
      for Adolescents (CIFFTA) developed as part of a Stage I treatment development effort and
      yielding promising preliminary findings. Drug use rates are highest among Hispanic middle
      school youth and to date no treatments have met criteria for "Well Established" in the
      treatment of substance abuse in Hispanic adolescents. Further treatment for Hispanic youth
      and families is complicated by the fact that these families often differ from mainstream
      populations in culture-related values, beliefs and behaviors that can directly impact
      engagement, retention, and efficacy/effectiveness of drug treatment. Our efforts to develop a
      more powerful treatment capable of addressing these issues began with a Stage 1 study that
      led to the development of a multi-component treatment that includes a flexible manual that
      allows treatment tailoring to the unique characteristics of individual families. CIFFTA
      integrates innovative culturally-based, individually-based, and family-based components to:
      1) reduce maladaptive family processes (e.g., poor parenting practices, family conflict) and
      increase family protective factors (e.g., strong parent-child attachment), 2) teach
      adolescents skills to effectively manage interpersonal conflicts and stressors and to
      increase motivation to change, 3) deliver psycho-educational and culturally congruent
      material (e.g., modules on immigration stressors) to youth and parents both separately and
      together, and 4) deliver the intervention using a flexible treatment manual that allows the
      clinician to tailor the treatment (e.g., by selecting the most relevant psycho-educational
      modules and themes) to the unique characteristics and needs of the Hispanic family.

      This Stage II randomized trial randomizes 220 Hispanic adolescents ages 14-17 who meet DSM-IV
      criteria for Substance Abuse to a 4-month treatment of either CIFFTA or Traditional Family
      Therapy. The study tests CIFFTA's efficacy in impacting drug use, risky sexual behavior, and
      other severe behavior problems, and hypothesized mechanisms of change, in a larger and more
      rigorous Stage II trial. Assessments occur at baseline, 4 months post baseline (end of
      treatment), 10 months post baseline and 16 months post baseline. Should this line of research
      continue to be successful, it has the potential to contribute to the field a highly
      innovative and efficacious treatment for Hispanic drug abusing adolescents, a better
      understanding of mechanisms of treatment efficacy, and also a framework for future flexible
      and tailored treatments that can be used to better address the unique needs of other special
      populations.
    

Detailed description: 
      This Stage II randomized trial provides a more rigorous test for Culturally Informed &
      Flexible Family Based Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) which was developed as part of a
      Stage I treatment development effort and yielded promising preliminary findings. Drug use
      rates are highest among Hispanic middle school youth and to date no treatments have met
      criteria for "Well Established" in the treatment of substance abuse in Hispanic adolescents.
      Further treatment for Hispanic youth and families is complicated by the fact that these
      families often differ from mainstream populations in culture-related values, beliefs and
      behaviors that can directly impact engagement, retention, and efficacy/effectiveness of drug
      treatment. Our efforts to develop a more powerful treatment began with a Stage 1 study that
      led to the development of a multi-component treatment that includes a flexible manual that
      allows treatment tailoring to the unique characteristics of individual families. The current
      Stage II trial randomizes 220 Hispanic adolescents ages 14-17 who meet DSM-IV criteria for
      Substance Abuse to a 4-month treatment of either CIFFTA or Traditional Family Therapy. The
      study tests CIFFTA's efficacy in impacting drug use, risky sexual behavior, and other severe
      behavior problems, and hypothesized mechanisms of change. Should this line of research
      continue to be successful, it has the potential to contribute to the field a highly
      innovative and efficacious treatment for Hispanic drug abusing adolescents, a better
      understanding of mechanisms of treatment efficacy, and also a framework for future flexible
      and tailored treatments that can be used to better address the unique needs of other special
      populations.

      Design and Methods: The study is divided into three phases. The first phase (months 1- 5)
      prior to the initiation of the randomized trial focused on: 1) clarifying manual sections and
      finalizing all assessment measures, 2) hiring and training therapists and assessors, and 3)
      setting up the web-based data collection system. The second phase (months 6-47) includes the
      implementation of the randomized trial and the delivery of all clinical treatments. Beginning
      in month 6 we began to recruit 220 Hispanic adolescents (14-17 years of age) who meet DSM-IV
      criteria for Substance Abuse or Dependency. Following screening, consent and assessment, the
      adolescents and their families will be randomly assigned to either the (1) Culturally
      Informed and Flexible Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) or to our Traditional
      Family Therapy (TFT). The two conditions will be tested as a four month intervention with two
      sessions per week. The participation of adolescents and families in clinical services will
      end at approximately month 48 of the grant. The third phase (months 48-60) will focus on the
      completion of all follow-up assessments, data cleaning and logic checks, data base locks, and
      the analysis, interpretation and reporting of findings. Assessments will be conducted at
      baseline, termination (4 months), 6 month follow-up (10 months post baseline), and 12 month
      follow-up (16 months post baseline). Data from urine analyses, self-reports of therapeutic
      alliance and data on service utilization outside of the program, will also be collected
      throughout the entire course of therapy and service utilization will continue during periods
      between follow-up assessments. Longitudinal data analysis (growth curve modeling) will be
      used to test study hypotheses. More detail on the details of the randomized trial procedures
      is provided below.

      Randomized Study Design. This is a randomized clinical trial in which 220 14-17 year old
      Hispanic adolescents meeting DSM-IV criteria for Substance Abuse, and their families will be
      assessed at baseline, randomized to one of two outpatient conditions (CIFFTA or TFT) in which
      they will receive treatment twice weekly for four months, and assessed again following
      termination, 6 months following termination (T3) and 12 months following termination (T4).
      Randomization will be stratified by gender, number of comorbid psychiatric disorders, whether
      or not they were mandated to treatment, and whether or not they are taking medication upon
      entry into the program.

      Inclusion of Family members in the study. The target adolescents and parents/guardians are
      asked to participate in all assessments and in treatment. All other family members living in
      the household of the target adolescent will be invited to participate in the family treatment
      but not in assessments. Our previous projects have been very successful at identifying and
      engaging family members into treatment as well as in retaining them throughout the course of
      the treatment. In our Stage I project we were successful at engaging family members into
      treatment as indicated by the fact that we had an average of three family members per
      participant household participating in the family intervention component.

      Participant Recruitment Plan: We have a strong partnership with the Miami Behavioral Health
      Center which runs the Miami-Dade County Juvenile Addiction Receiving Facility in which all
      youth meet DSM-IV criteria for drug abuse and for which approximately 80% of the youth are
      Hispanic. Our previous research projects received many referrals from the JARF and this is
      bound to increase now that it is located at our partner agency. In our currently NCMHD
      prevention study with 11-14 year old Hispanic youth and their parents we have been very
      successful at recruiting from community clinics, middle school counselors, trust counselors
      and directly from the community. One highly successful strategy was to conduct an interview
      about the research program on Spanish language television. This strategy used at the
      initiation of randomization produced a large wave of interested families to the project and
      facilitated the prompt filling of all slots. Similar interventions on Spanish radio have been
      equally effective. These strategies will be utilized if participation rates are low.

      Screening and Assessment Procedures. Study personnel are trained to identify substance
      abusing youth and families and to explain the research study in detail. Those interested will
      be asked to sign an informed consent that allows the screening of inclusion/exclusion
      criteria. Those individual who meet screening criteria go on to the baseline part of the
      assessment. Participants that do not meet criteria will receive another set of placement
      referrals. Participants will be randomized immediately after baseline testing and will be
      given the name of the therapist that will be contacting them to schedule the first therapy
      session. All participants will be assessed 4 months after baseline (post-treatment - T2), 10
      months after baseline (Follow-up 1 or T3) and 16 months after baseline (Follow-up 2 - T4).
      All assessments will be administered by highly trained and competent Master's level research
      assistants who are bilingual in English and Spanish. Our assessors have worked on multiple
      projects using the same types of self-report and interview measures proposed in this study.
      All measures and consents will be available in both English Spanish to ensure that primarily
      Spanish-speaking adolescents or parents are not excluded.

      Each assessment interview lasts approximately 3 hours and consists of three parts: an
      individual interview with the adolescent, an individual interview with each parent, and a
      family interview session. To ensure participation at the T2-T4 assessments, families will be
      paid $40 for T2 and $75 for T3 and $100 for T4, for completed assessments. The fees may be
      slightly higher than other projects that work only with individual participants because our
      assessments include multiple family members (typically an adolescent and two caregivers). The
      fee is meant to compensate 3 participants X approximately 3 hours each or 9 total hours of
      assessment time per time-point. All assessment data are entered directly into a web-based
      Velos system.

      Therapist Supervision and Adherence Monitoring. Separate weekly clinical meetings are held
      for the CIFFTA and TFT condition therapists. Each therapist will receive formal supervision
      in these meetings, in addition to consults as needed. Recorded sessions will be reviewed, the
      clinical complexity of cases will be discussed, and good manual implementation will be
      emphasized. These meetings help to ensure that manualized interventions are delivered
      competently. The independent adherence rater will randomly select 20% of the sessions from
      each condition at different treatment phases (early, mid, and late) for adherence ratings.
      These rating will document the adequacy with which treatment sessions follow specific manual
      interventions and treatment strategies. Ratings that fall below adequacy on any
      dimension/component will trigger increased supervision focus for that dimension and if
      necessary, re-training. Adherence raters will be trained using the established adherence
      checklists for the two study conditions which have been developed and used successfully in
      previous studies. The condition supervisors will be held as the gold-standard for inter-rater
      reliability on adherence ratings and raters will be trained to achieve an intra-class
      correlation coefficient of .70 or higher, and at least 80% agreement across items.
      Inter-rater reliability will be checked regularly to avoid drift.

      Prevention of Dropouts from the study. To ensure retaining as much of the sample as possible,
      each participant will have contact with the same assessment specialist over the entire course
      of the study. Additional procedures that we have established to retain Ss in the study, and
      ensure follow-up assessments, include: 1) conducting assessments at convenient locations for
      the families including their homes when necessary, 2) paying families for their participation
      in assessments, 3) conducting additional service utilization phone interviews at points
      between the formal assessment points that is, at 6, 8, 12, and 14 months post-baseline, 4)
      updating all contact information at regular intervals, and 5) obtaining the names of three
      contact persons who are close to family members and who may be contacted by the Assessment
      Specialist in the event that the family is unreachable at the assessment time-points (this is
      included in the consent form).

      Treatment Conditions:

      Traditional Family Therapy (TFT). The TFT condition is intended to control for many of the
      factors present in CIFFTA except for the systematic integration of individual level work and
      psycho-educational modules within a flexible treatment package. This is the same control
      intervention that was used in the Stage I study with one exception. In that Stage I study we
      tested the "add on" effect of the new treatment components and flexibility, to investigate
      whether such additions would lead to a significant boost in treatment effects. The dosages of
      the two interventions were not equal. To provide a more rigorous test of the intervention by
      having equivalent dosages in the two conditions, we have added to the TFT intervention used
      in the Stage I study, an additional hour per week. The additional weekly hour consists of
      drug education and risky sexual behavior/STI/HIV information delivered to the youth in a
      group format. This additional hour per week per client of intervention was selected after
      consultation with the director of one of the largest local community treatment agencies that
      uses this approach as a standard of care. The Traditional Family Therapy (TFT) condition
      intervention is rooted in the Structural Family Therapy work of Salvador Minuchin. TFT is
      designed to: 1) target behavior problems and substance abuse; and 2) target youth who were
      unwilling to seek treatment on their own. The typical length of intervention for TFT is 4
      months of weekly family sessions. An important assumption underlying this and other
      family-oriented models is that the family therapist can spend only a limited number of hours
      with participants, but by changing the family system (parents, extended family, non-blood
      kin), the family context becomes a force that will positively influence the youth on an
      around the clock basis.

      Culturally Informed and Flexible Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA). The CIFFTA
      treatment model has three major components - Family Therapy, Individual Therapy, and
      Psycho-educational Modules - delivered over 16 weeks in a two session (60 minutes each) per
      week format. One session will typically be a family session which may include Family Therapy
      or Psycho-educational modules designed for the family or parents alone. The other session is
      typically with the adolescent alone, which may include individual treatment or
      Psycho-educational modules designed for the adolescent. CIFFTA is a flexible manual because
      it allows for the selection of psycho-educational modules that address specific family and
      adolescent clinical and cultural issues that are central to that lives of that family. CIFFTA
      is an outpatient treatment. Home visits although infrequent, may be critically important at
      times when a key member has disengaged from therapy and must be re-engaged. Visits to
      schools, courts, and other important institutions in the adolescent's ecology are also
      allowed as needed (usually a maximum of 2-3 such visits per family).

      Individual characteristics that are targeted for modification by CIFFTA include: a) impulsive
      involvement in unhealthy behaviors such as drug use, risky sexual behavior, and criminal
      activity, and b) co-occurring psychiatric disorders.

      Individual level factors that support healthy development and are promoted by revised CIFFTA
      will be: 1) increased motivation to work toward healthy development, 2) life skills
      acquisition, 3) goal setting, 4) knowledge of short and long term drug effects and HIV risk,
      and 4) improved decision making.

      Family characteristics that will be targeted for modification by CIFFTA include: a)
      maladaptive responses to immigration and acculturation processes and stresses, b) parental
      neglect, c) verbal or physical violence, and d) interactions that reward/reinforce
      maladaptive behaviors (i.e., coercive processes).

      Family level factors that support healthy development and are promoted by revised CIFFTA will
      be improvements in: 1) parenting practices, 2) parent-adolescent attachment, 3) parental
      guidance and leadership, 4) stability of home environment, 5) directness and clarity of
      communication, and 6) positive/supportive family interactions.

      Individual and family level targets of change must be specifically able to address the
      ecological factors as well. For example, parenting practices may be improved to better
      monitor the adolescent's peers; parental leadership and guidance may focus on taking a more
      active role in advocacy in schools; and adolescent skills may become important in better
      addressing peer pressure in the peer context.

      CIFFTA Thematic Psycho-Educational Modules Component The thematic modules component of CIFFTA
      provides parents and adolescents with focused information/educational sessions on specific
      areas that are relevant to the family. Content and process are both emphasized during the
      session, however content is more heavily emphasized in modules while process work (e.g.,
      shaping better communication, deepening their understanding of each other, processing past
      traumas) is more heavily emphasized in family sessions.
    

Intervention name(s): Family Therapy based on Structural Family Therapy; Group Therapy; Psychoeducational Sessions; Individual Adolescent Therapy Sessions
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Once per week family therapy based on Structural Family Therapy. Sees to improve parenting practices, communication, and problem solving skills. It also seeks to increase the attachment/bond between parents and adolescents.; Group Therapy is provided once per week and is designed to share information on HIV and STI risk and protection. There are typically 8-10 adolescents in a group.; Psycho-educational sessions are used to provide didactic in formation to parents alone, adolescents alone, or both together. Content may focus on parenting, drug use risks, depression, HIV/STI risk or other major issues that adolescents and families confront. There are also modules that focus on culture-related stressors and processes that can be provided to families for whom this is a prominent issue.; Individual sessions with the adolescent focus on Motivational Interviewing, coaching for family sessions, and monitoring of unhealthy behaviors.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Hispanic; adolescent; drug abuse treatment; evidence-based; family therapy; adaptive family treatment; Culturally Informed Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents