Clinical Research Directory

The Co-Venture Trial: A Cluster Randomized Trial of Personality-targeted Interventions on Adolescent Substance Use and Cognitive Outcomes

The Preventure Program is the first and only school-based alcohol and drug prevention program that has been shown to prevent onset and growth in alcohol and substance misuse in British and Canadian youth. Unlike universal programs that tend to promote generic coping skills and balance normative attitudes around substance use, this selected personality-targeted approach is based on a psychosocial model and validated by Dr Patricia Conrod and targets four personality-specific motivational pathways to substance misuse: Hopelessness, Anxiety Sensitivity, Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking, each associated with different motives for substance use, drug use profiles and patterns of non-addictive psychopathology. As a primary goal of the Coventure project, the investigators propose a long-term trial of this intervention strategy to examine how this evidence-based intervention can reduce onset of substance use disorders in young people and related secondary mental health, academic and cognitive outcomes. As a secondary goal, the investigators propose to use sensitive neuropsychological measures to examine how this evidence-based intervention can positively impact on cognitive development over the course of adolescence, to tease apart some of the mechanisms involved in the causal pathway from early onset substance use to poor cognitive development and long-term addiction outcomes.

Centralized Virtual SBIRT for Pediatric Primary Care

Adolescent alcohol and other drug (AOD) use is a significant public health problem which contributes to high levels of mortality, morbidity and healthcare costs in young people, and identification and early intervention for these problems is critical to improving outcomes. Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) in pediatric primary care is an evidence-based strategy for addressing these problems, but has not been widely and systematically implemented, for a variety of reasons, including lack of training and staffing resources to support its implementation. This pragmatic, Type 1 Hybrid Comparative Effectiveness Implementation study will examine whether a centralized, virtually-delivered modality of SBIRT, rapidly accessible by multiple pediatric primary care clinics, can be cost-effectively implemented to improve early identification and treatment for AOD use and comorbid mental health problems among adolescents identified as being at high or severe risk of AOD use disorder during adolescent Well Visits.