title: Acceptability and availability of harm-reduction interventions for drug abuse in American substance abuse treatment agencies.
abstract: This study assessed acceptability, availability, and reasons for nonavailability of interventions designed to prevent drug use related harm by substituting pharmaceuticals for illicit drugs; facilitating detoxification; and reducing the occurrence of HIV transmission, relapse, and opiate overdose. A survey was mailed to a sample of 500 randomly selected American substance abuse treatment agencies. Of 435 potentially eligible respondents, 222 (51%) returned usable data. A subset of interventions--including harm reduction education, cue exposure therapy, needle exchange, substitute opiate prescribing, various detoxification regimes, and complementary therapies--were rated as somewhat or completely acceptable by 50% or more of the respondents. Regardless of their acceptability, listed interventions were generally not available from responding agencies; respondents typically attributed unavailability to lack of resources and inconsistency of an intervention with agency philosophy.
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003625:Data Collection; D040261:Harm Reduction; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D016320:Substance Abuse Treatment Centers; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D014481:United States