Preventing Drug Use in Low Income Clinic Populations (QUIT)

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 3; Phase 2

Conditions: Harmful Use; Drug Use

Treatments: Behavioral: Quit Using Drugs Intervention Trial; Behavioral: Health behavior maintenance

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01942876

DESPR DA022445

Details and patient eligibility

About

The proposed study will address the critical need to reduce illegal drug use, in particular drug use, and the occurrence of drug-related harm in low-income racially diverse patient populations at urban primary care safety-net clinics. Since they are at risk for accelerated trajectories to drug dependence once drug use begins, low-income racially diverse populations pose particular concern for public health policy makers and drug-use prevention efforts. The study will be the first to standardize drug screening and primary-care clinician delivered brief intervention among racially diverse "at risk" drug users, that is users with casual or frequent use without the physiological or psychological manifestations of dependence, to reduce their 'at risk' use of drugs, and it may effectively interrupt their pathway to dependence.

Full description

The Quit Using Drugs Intervention Trial (QUIT) will be the first randomized controlled trial in the U.S. that is powered to detect the effect of a primary care clinician delivered brief intervention protocol for reducing 'at risk' drug use and drug-related harm among low-income adult patients (ages 18 and older) at multiple safety net clinics in Los Angeles County. For this small trial, we will sample patients with 'at risk' use of drugs (marijuana, crack/cocaine, amphetamines/methamphetamines, inhalants, sedatives or sleeping pills, hallucinogens, and opiates), the most commonly used serious drugs among patients at our clinic sites. "At risk" drug use is defined in this study as current use (past 90 days) of drug measured as a self-reported total score of 4 to 26 on the WHO Alcohol Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST). A total of 7,000-8,000 patients will be approached for screening to yield a 3-month effective sample size of 245 eligible patients per condition (1) an intervention condition involving drug use health education or (2) a control condition involving care as usual. In the intervention condition, very brief (less than 5 minutes) clinician advice regarding quitting drug use will be followed by two 2 and 6 week post-visit drug health education sessions on quitting drug use and cautioning against use of other 'at risk' substance use such as alcohol and tobacco. Patients assigned to the control condition will receive standard care for drug use at the baseline visit with their clinician. Follow-up assessments will be conducted at 3 month post-randomization. The framework for the QUIT project is the Social Action Theory, and the brief intervention protocol is based on NIDA's principles on prevention research and the utility of the 5 A's approach for assisting behavioral changes among patients (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, Arrange) in the clinic setting. If found to be effective in the community health center setting, this clinician and telephone drug-use health education program could become a model for health promotion activities. that would be expanded to all 'at risk' substance use and shared between community health centers.

Enrollment: 411 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• ages 18 and older
• report of drug use in the previous 90 days (i.e., (marijuana, crack/cocaine, amphetamines/methamphetamines, inhalants, sedatives or sleeping pills, hallucinogens, and opiates)
• an ASSIST score between 4 and 26 indicating 'at risk' drug use
• English or Spanish speaking
• able (not cognitively impaired) and willing to cooperate with data collection and research procedures, including 2 telephone counseling sessions and 3 month follow-up assessments

Exclusion criteria

• Pregnant
• Drug or alcohol dependence

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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411 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

The Quit Using Drugs Intervention Trial (QUIT) experimental arm includes: screening, very brief clinician advice, and telephone drug-use health education to reduce 'at risk' drug use and thus interrupt progression from casual or episodic abuse to dependence.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Quit Using Drugs Intervention Trial

Control

Sham Comparator group

Description:

This arm will receive a sham telephone intervention of equivalent duration on health behavior maintenance.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Health behavior maintenance