TRAINING

The drug abuse training program seeks to ensure the availability of qualified manpower in treatment programs. As a major share of this responsibility is transferred to the various states, through the combined efforts of the Regional Training Centers and technical assistance by NIDA personnel, the Institute will concentrate upon augmenting the national training effort through such activites as designing training models for sparsely populated states, and developing criteria for assessment of work experience in terms of academic credit required for credential recognition. A total of 11,800 people received training in FY 1975. Principal mechanisms of support are as follows:

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Grants: Training grants are awarded under the authority of the
Public Health Service Act (Sections 301 and 303) to non-profit
institutions for specialized training programs in the prevention and
treatment of narcotic addiction and drug abuse. The training that
medical students and students in health related areas receive on
drug abuse is improved by increasing the knowledge of academic
facility and by developing regular courses of instruction. Other
programs support training of persons who come into direct contact
with drug abusers as well as specialized in-service or short term
instruction on treatment, rehabilitation, prevention, and evaluation
of training methods. Training topics include pharmacology, urine
surveillance, medical problems and patient care, treatment modalities
and their management, and individual and group techniques for working
with the addict. In FY 1976 support will again be limited to contin-
uation funding of a select number of training grant projects with no
new programs being initiated.

Research Fellowships: Under the provisions of the National Research
Service Award Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-348) individual and institutional
awards are authorized to provide degree-oriented training support
for aspiring bio-medical and behavioral research manpower. Support
for this program will be reduced from $148,000 in FY 1975 to $67,000
in FY 1976 and no new awards will be made.

Contracts: Contract funds support the operation of the National
Drug Abuse Training Center in Washington, D.C. The Center continues
to serve as a model for developing, validating, and testing training
techniques and methodologies which have application for training
workers in community drug abuse treatment, rehabilitation, and
prevention programs. The Center provides limited training to federal,
state, and local government officials, and other health profes-
sionals engaged in community programs to combat drug abuse. The
primary effort of the NDATC in FY 1976 will be to support states in
the development of their training capability by assisting with
credentialing procedures, standard evaluation, training of trainers,
and the implementation of their statewide training systems. Funds
are not provided for continuation of the Regional Training Centers
since it is anticipated that state programs will be sufficiently
developed to preclude the necessity of continued support for region-
al centers. Contract funding in FY 1976 will, therefore, be limited
to the $2,000,000 necessary to continue the operations of the Nation-
al Training Center..

Summary Objectives for FY 1976

The National Drug Abuse Training will continue to develop and consolidate its role as the center of national training system in the field of drug abuse prevention and treatment. The funding of training grants will continue to be phased out and support for fellowships will be limited.

SCIENTIFIC AND PROGRAM INFORMATION

The Institute is the primary service facility in the Federal Government for the acquisition and dissemination of programmatic and technical information relating to drug abuse prevention activities. More specifically, the Institute is responsible for maintaining program and management information emanating from federal and state drug abuse prevention efforts and providing periodic and special reports and analyses for operational and planning purposes; developing drug abuse information systems for internal management and for use by other federal agencies, states and localities; and providing consultation to and liaison with other federal, state, and private agencies concerned with information programs on drug abuse. In addition, it plays the lead role in the generation of data analyses for use in implementation of the national drug abuse policy. The major subject areas into which this effort is divided is as

follows:

National Clearinghouse for Drug Abuse Information

The establishment of the National Clearinghouse for Drug Abuse Information (NCDAI) was announced in March 1970 by the President in response to the critical national need for a focal point for accurate and reliable information on drug abuse. At that time a number of drug abuse reporting mechanisms existed, most of which were related to programs totally or partially funded by the Federal Government. Since the existence and activities of these programs was already known, it was determined that all programs, federally, locally, and privately supported had to be identified in order to develop a total picture of the drug abuse treatment, prevention, and education services available throughout the country. The Clearinghouse operated as a central source for the collection and dissemination of drug abuse information within the Federal Government and served as a coordinating information agency for groups throughout the country involved in drug abuse programs. The NCDAI is the first federal agency to systematically organize and synthesize the mass of substantive data in the drug abuse field into an operational computerized information storage and retrieval system. The NCDAI system features abstracts or descriptions of books, pamphlets, journal articles, posters, films and other audiovisual materials as well as addresses of drug abuse treatment and prevention programs. Major components of the NCDAI follow below.

Resources and Materials File (RMF)

This file contains abstracts of documents and audiovisual materials. Scanning of the biomedical, pharmacological, social and behavioral science literature in addition to more popular and unorthodox publications such as the underground press is conducted on regular basis.

Clearinghouse Program File (CPF)

This file consists of identifying data on drug abuse programs across the country. The following elements are included: program name, street address, city, state, zip code, phone number, funding and program type. The file is searchable on the individual elements and various combinations of those elements. The information is updated on a continuing basis.

Drug Abuse Communications Network (DRACON)

This program serves as the vehicle through which decentralized access to drug abuse information can be provided so that regional needs may be met as

closely as possible to the source; the appropriate use of both national and local resources can be maximized; cooperation between drug abuse information resources can be increased; and truly responsive communications can be developed.

Integrated Drug Abuse Management Information System (IDAMIS)

IDAMIS is an information system designed to provide federal and state governments with timely and useful data on basic drug abuse phenomena, drug abuse treatment and prevention units, and related financial information. It is a series of three stand-alone subsystems, or modules, designed to provide the information required for intelligent and effective management decision making processes. These modules contain common identifying data elements necessary for the integration of the modules into one total comprehensive drug abuse management information system. The system is composed of the following three major or prime subsystems:

Client_Oriented Data Acquisition Process (CODAP)

CODAP is designed to provide management with information on clinic administrative data (i.e., identification, funding sources, program linkages, and client capacities, etc.), clinic activity, client demography, treatment approaches, treatment summaries, first usage incidence, and other drug abuse phenomena. This information is, and can be, aggregated by many combinations of interest items at various levels of reporting, thus providing a wide range of useful data displays for management use. After extensive review, the final system was drafted and pilot tested in New York, Massachusetts, and California beginning in July of this year. National training began in September and full scale implementation was effective November 1, 1974.

Data is introduced by treatment programs across the nation via the CODAP Input Report Form, a five-part form containing reports on admissions, discharges, activity, client progress, and summary data on client flow. The form, with its Admission and Discharge Reports, provides information relating to the two most crucial points in the treatment process. The data derived from these two reports provides the major information output source of CODAP. The Activity Report provides the treatment process information essential to fulfill NIDA grant and contract specifications. The Client Flow Summary is a type of transmittal sheet, which along with the three prior mentioned reports constitutes the entire reporting system for most treatment units. The Client Progress Report is a specific requirement of the Bureau of Prisons for reporting the individual progress of their clients only.

Drug Abuse Prevention Resource Units (DAPRU)

DAPRU is the drug abuse inventory module of IDAMIS. Its objective is to construct and maintain a dynamic inventory of every drug abuse prevention unit in the United States, including trusts and territories. This portion of IDAMIS will provide accurate and current information on all types of drug abuse programs, regardless of funding.

DAPRU records the number, type, and location of all drug abuse prevention resources that exist within the United States. It also gathers information about these resources to provide a composite picture of the nature, type, and level of operation of each resource unit. In addition, it traces how units operating under a single organizational entity are linked to each other in terms of vertical administrative control as well as horizontal operational relationships. All of this information will be fed into a computer for ease

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in updating and analytical report generation. The final inventory will contain information on treatment service units, administrative service units, central intake units, other treatment related units, training service units, education service units, information service units, and research service units.

A

The DAPRU system is being implemented according to a phase-in plan. pretest was conducted in four states (September October 1974) with the concept being enthusiastically received. The file is presently being established through the Single State Agencies. The computer software is being developed concurrently with the file initialization process so that it will be ready for a pilot installation in March 1975.

Financial Management Information System (FMIS)

The centralization of drug abuse management and funding responsibilities at the federal and state levels has established certain requirements for information to determine and assess the use of such funds. NIDA decided to design and implement a Financial Management Information System (FMIS) to support these requirements.

More specifically, the purpose of the FMIS is to support the capability of NIDA and the Single State Agencies to manage their block and discretionary grant and contract funds for drug abuse. The FMIS is intended to provide managers at the federal, state, and local program levels with information essential to: (a) program planning; (b) program monitoring and financial control, including grants and contracts management; (c) cost funding; (d) budget formulation and execution; (e) program analysis and evaluation. The FMIS is designated to supplement not replace existing systems and to support certain critical requirements that are, for the most part, not satisfied by existing systems. These include: (a) grants/contracts descriptive data on state-funded programs; (b) rates of expenditure on state and federally funded programs, including state formula grants; (c) income received by programs from third party payments; (d) functional cost information such as total program costs and costs per client in the various treatment settings and environments.

The FMIS system is currently reviewed by the states and in May 1975 a requirements definition study will be established in five selected states. Depending upon results, a systems demonstration project will be undertaken in the Fall of 1975 with subsequent implementation as soon thereafter as possible.

Integrated Drug Abuse Reporting Process (IDARP)

The Institute realized that many of the Single State Agencies did not have sufficient resources in the form of funds, manpower, or hardware (EDP equipment) to maintain the IDAMIS or any of its subsystems after installation. IDARP was initiated to assist the Single State Agencies in these efforts by providing funds for use in acquiring needed manpower, data processing services and hardware, and other related administrative expenses. The funds are provided by contracts to the Single State Agencies and presently all except one of the agencies have entered into these agreements. This virtually total acceptance of IDARP will help to ensure the effective establishment of the IDAMIS system.

Summary Objectives for FY 1976

The major effort will center upon assisting the states in assuming a more participatory and supportive position in the collection of vital information for the planning and management of the drug abuse problem. Through the

continued development of these information systems at the state level, the Institute's objectives of increasing the responsibility of the states and local programs will be further strengthened. In addition, work will be completed on the initial integration and coordination among the various sytems required to establish the national information system on drug abuse. This will help to ensure that drug abuse prevention resources are being effectively utilized and efficiently managed within the confines of state and federal requirements and regulations, and eventually will result in stardardizing information across state lines, permitting comparision of various jurisdictions and minimizing costs.