Abstract
New Directions, Inc., contracted with the Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research and Education (Begun Center) in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to evaluate the utility and impact of the Addiction Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (ACHESS) on youth undergoing intensive outpatient (IOP) treatment. ACHESS is a combined client-facing mobile phone application (“app”) and web-based clinician dashboard used to support and monitor clients seeking addiction treatment. Between May 2016 and April 2017, New Directions provided the Begun Center evaluation team with de-identified demographic and treatment-related data on 28 IOP clients enrolled in ACHESS (“study group”) and 28 patients treated the prior year whom were not enrolled in ACHESS (“comparison group”). In June 2017 the evaluation team also conducted a focus group with 7 New Directions staff to acquire information of their experiences, perceptions, and opinions of ACHESS. Analysis of these data demonstrates that a larger percentage of study group clients (54.2%) completed treatment compared to those in the comparison group (42.9%). Additional findings highlight that—on the one hand—several elements of the ACHESS system were successfully integrated into the IOP model of care and appeared to prove useful in positively impacting treatment by way of fostering client-therapist relationships and providing more rapid means to de-escalate client agitation and aggression, as well as by decreasing the total number of days in treatment by nearly one-half. On the other hand—the staff explained that many elements of ACHESS offered neither much utility nor meaningful impact and could be greatly improved. Because this evaluation is based on a very small, purposive sample future research is necessary to test and build-on these findings to further develop the utility and improve the impact of ACHESS for youth in addiction treatment.
Original language | American English |
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State | Published - Jun 2017 |
Disciplines
- Social Work