Outcomes from the National Alcohol and Other Drugs Educational Program (ADEP) for Social Work Faculty

BACKGROUND: Our society is experiencing epidemic of alcohol and other drugs (AOD), including opioids. The majority of social workers are employed in jobs that require AOD knowledge; however, few schools of social work include AOD content in their curricula and key reason for this is faculty lack of knowledge of this content area (Krull et al., 2018). The NIAAA funded Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Program (ADEP) was developed to respond to these gaps. The first year of ADEP demonstrated efficacy with respect to increasing faculty knowledge and confidence about teaching AOD content. Using a pretest-posttest design, clinical social work faculty participants showed statistically significant (p< .001) improvement in overall alcohol and other drug-related knowledge (Baseline: Mean[SD]= 8.75 [2.44]; Post-Intervention: Mean[SD] = 13.88[1.96], Cohen's d = -2.16) in the domains of screening/assessment, brief intervention, medication-assisted treatment, and recovery and relapse prevention. Corresponding increases were also observed for faculty confidence in teaching clinical skills related to alcohol and other drug screening, assessment, and treatment (Lundgren et al. 2018).

 PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study is to determine if the first ADEP cohort of 50 faculty retained the post-test knowledge and confidence in teaching AOD content increases six months post program participation.

 METHODS: An examination comparing the level of confidence faculty rated their teaching skills, as well as the frequencies of the percentage of the correct answers at baseline, post training and at 6 months post training was conducted.

 RESULTS: Of the 50 social work faculty who participated in the year one ADEP program 38 completed the six month follow up survey for a follow up rate of 76.0%. The follow-up survey results indicated that social work faculty knowledge about specific details such as names of medications for alcohol use disorder had decreased significantly. However, their knowledge about specific evidence-based practices specifically SBIRT, MI and relapse prevention were retained six months post-immersion program participation. Most positive was that the faculty confidence about teaching alcohol and other drug content, significantly increased from pre-test to post test and from post-test to six month follow up. Future analyses will examine which differences are statistically significant.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE/POLICY/RESEARCH: A key implication is that faculty participating in this type of immersion program seem to better retain knowledge about evidence based practices such as SBIRT, MI and relapse prevention than detailed information such as names of SUD medications. Second, a consistent finding was that faculty confidence about teaching AOD content including teaching about medications as one type of treatment increased significantly. Also, given that over 20 faculty from the ADEP program report including materials from ADEP in their teaching the overall implication is that the ADEP training increased faculty capacity to teach and AOD curricula and that they retained knowledge in teaching the key evidence based practice skills important to teach graduate level clinical practice social workers; SBIRT, MI and Relapse Prevention Techniques.