The ATTC/NIATx Service Improvement Blog - Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) Network

ATTC & NIATx: After 10 years – Still Better Together!

Published: 08/10/2023

By Todd Molfenter, director of Great Lakes ATTC & director, NIATx, Laurie Krom – ATTC NCO co-director, and Maxine Henry, ATTC NCO co-director In August 2013, the ATTC Network and NIATx launched the ATTC/NIATx Service Improvement blog with a welcome post by Laurie Krom and Kim Johnson, aptly titled "Better Together." The inaugural post celebrated the […]

Watch: ATTC Network's 30th Anniversary Celebration

Published: 06/30/2023

Since 1993, the vision of the ATTC Network has been to unify science, education and service to transform lives through evidence-based and promising treatment and recovery practices in a recovery-oriented system of care. The ATTC Network is an international, multidisciplinary resource for professionals in the addictions treatment and recovery services field. Established in 1993 by […]

ATTC's Pearls of Wisdom: Flipping the Classroom to Improve Intensive Technical Assistance Efforts

Published: 06/15/2023

By Bryan Hartzler, PhD, director, Northwest ATTC, director/research associate professor, Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute (ADAI), University of Washington School of Medicine A convergence of technological advances and pandemic influences has resulted in an influx of asynchronous learning resources, or products the health workforce access individually and experience at their own pace. Examples include online training […]

NIATx in New Places: Bringing the NIATx Change Leader Academy to HealtheKnowledge

Published: 06/13/2023

By Maureen Fitzgerald, communications manager, Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC, and Scott Gatzke, director of dissemination, Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC NIATx began as a demonstration project in which 39 substance use treatment organizations tested process improvement tools borrowed from industry and manufacturing to improve treatment access and retention. The success of the NIATx […]

ATTC's Pearls of Wisdom: Training & Trainer Evolution – COVID’s Lasting Impact

Published: 06/01/2023

By Paul Warren, LMSW, Research Project Director at the New York State Psychiatric Institute The COVID-19 pandemic forced and expedited the use of technology to provide services, training, and technical assistance (TA) on an unprecedented scale across the globe, in all professions. From our present vantage point, trainers and TA Providers may wonder “Will SUD […]

NIATx in New Places: Building Capacity for Effective School-Based Suicide Prevention

Published: 05/09/2023

By: Maureen Fitzgerald and Sarah McMinn Sarah McMinn, LCSW, joined the Great Lakes MHTTC team in 2018 to lead the School-Based Mental Health Supplement. In her previous work as clinical program manager for a Colorado agency, Sarah had worked with homeless families and mental health clinicians. She had also helped launch a family and child […]

Reckoning harm reduction with Twelve Step recovery: Who’s “in the room(s)”?

Published: 04/25/2023

By Kim Gannon and Emily Pasman, guest authors Twelve Step programs are ubiquitous in the US substance use disorder (SUD) treatment landscape. For many, they provide a powerful forum of life transformation, fulfillment, and purpose. We are two such people: two statistically rare cases (Dodes & Dodes, 2015) who have successfully found long-term recovery from […]

ATTC’s Pearls of Wisdom: The Legacy and Future of the NIATx Model and the Great Lakes ATTC

Published: 04/06/2023

By Todd Molfenter, PhD, director of Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, & PTTC How can I successfully make “organizational change?” This is the fundamental question that started the NIATx movement. Simply stated, NIATx is a set of tools and techniques used to make organizational change: whether it be improving the admissions process, implementing an evidence-based clinical […]

ATTC’s Pearls of Wisdom: Relationship building starts with ‘listening’

Published: 02/02/2023

By Catelyn Holmes, for the Mid-America ATTC If there’s one thing Pat Stilen has learned in her decades’ long career, it’s the value of building relationships, and that starts by listening. “Building relationships and listening, that makes all the difference in the world,” she said. Stilen, a social worker, retired from her […]

Embracing Change: A System Framework for Visualizing Change

Published: 12/15/2022

By Maureen Nichols, South Southwest ATTC director Much of the work by the Addiction Technology Transfer Center network and their partners in behavioral health care systems focuses on making changes that improve the lives and health of communities, families, and individuals. Examples include providing intensive training, feedback and coaching to counselors working in substance use […]

Embracing Change: Using Native Ways of Knowing to Combat the Opioid Crisis

Published: 11/17/2022

By Meg Schneider, TOR Program Coordinator, National American Indian & Alaska Native ATTC Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2022 showed a 39 percent increase in drug overdose deaths for Native people from 2019 to 2020. Only Black people had a higher increase (44 percent). Drug overdose deaths hit a record in […]

Embracing Change: Providing Program Specific Harm Reduction Technical Assistance

Published: 11/04/2022

By Lisa Carter and Jill Eriksen, Mid-America ATTC and Katie Burk, Facente Consulting SAMHSA defines Harm Reduction as “a comprehensive approach to addressing substance use disorders through prevention, treatment, and recovery where individuals who use substances set their own goals. Harm reduction organizations incorporate a spectrum of strategies that meet people “where they are” on […]

Embracing Change: Audio-Only Telehealth: Expanding Access to SUD Treatment/Recovery Services

Published: 10/20/2022

By Nancy Roget, Cindy Juntunen & Trisha Dudkowski, Mountain Plains ATTC The onset of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) in 2020 forced many Substance Use Disorders (SUD) treatment and recovery support providers to rapidly switch to virtual and/or telephone-based services. For some providers, as their proficiency and confidence grew, their adoption of videoconferencing and […]

Embracing Change: Leading Through Change - Essential Skills for Managers in Behavioral Health Settings

Published: 08/18/2022

By Beth Rutkowski, MPH, and Michael Shafer, Ph.D. Behavioral health and recovery support professionals operate within interdisciplinary, multi-professional teams of providers. Behavioral health professionals frequently find themselves serving as site managers, team leaders, shift leads, clinical supervisors, and other middle-management positions. In these positions, behavioral health professionals are often called upon to perform tasks and […]

Embracing Change: How Northwest ATTC is Helping Programs Enhance Their Co-occurring Disorder Services – A Model for Success

Published: 07/21/2022

By Denna Vandersloot, co-director, Northwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center Many clients seeking care for their substance use disorder also have co-occurring mental health disorders – and vice versa. Treating both types of conditions at the same time by providing quality integrated services is more effective than treating each disorder separately. Yet while integrated care has […]

SUD and Beyond: Schools Use NIATx To Improve Youth Suicide Prevention Efforts

Published: 06/14/2022

By: Kristina Spannbauer, Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, & PTTC Communications Specialist The NIATx model for process improvement was initially based on the question: Could the strategies used to improve processes in manufacturing and other industries be used to improve services in other fields, such as in substance use disorder (SUD), mental health, and educational settings? […]

A Glimpse of New York State’s Program to Address Hepatitis C and SUD

Published: 05/17/2022

Public health officials in New York State have launched a new learning collaborative aiming to integrate Hepatitis C testing and treatment into Opioid Treatment Programs. One of the ATTC Network's products, Guide to Integrating HCV Services into Opioid Treatment Programs, played a key role in helping launch the collaborative. Here's our Q&A with Mehvish Bhatti, project […]

Recruit-Hire-Retain: Navigating COVID-19 staffing challenges in behavioral healthcare

Published: 02/25/2022

Mat Roosa, LCSW-R NIATx Coach “Our program is fully staffed with a diverse and skilled team. Our team members usually stay for a long time, but when a staff member does leave, we are able to quickly hire a qualified replacement.” How many of today’s leaders in behavioral health can make such a claim? Could […]

Change Project 911 In Review

Published: 01/19/2022

Thank you for coming along on this Change Project 911 journey with Mat Roosa, the guest blogger for the series. Below you will find a list of all the Change Project 911 NIATx series with a short blurb. Select the title to read the full content of each blog. Help! My Project is Dragging on […]

Change Project 911: Unable to sustain a change

Published: 11/19/2021

Mat Roosa, LCSW-R NIATx Coach “It’s easy to quit drinking. I’ve done it a thousand times.” W.C. Fields Change is easy. Sustaining change is not so easy. This is true for personal changes like quitting smoking, exercising more, driving slower, or keeping the house more organized. It is also true for workplace systems changes, such […]

AMERSA People & Passion, Episode 10: Initiating Medications for Opioid Use Disorder—There’s an App for That?!?

Published: 10/28/2021

To support the utilization of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD), the Office Based Addiction Treatment Training and Technical Assistance (OBAT TTA) team will be releasing a mobile application that will guide healthcare providers through the initiation of buprenorphine and naltrexone for OUD (including injectable buprenorphine) and pain management for patients on these medications via […]

AMERSA People & Passion, Episode 9: History of AMERSA with Sid Schnoll

Published: 10/27/2021

Sid Schnoll, one of the founders of AMERSA, discusses with Paula Lum the origin of the organization out of the Career Teacher Program of the early 1970s. The desire by the federal government to cultivate experts in substance use disorders into health professional schools has resulted in a vibrant, growing organization that helps health educators […]

Change Project 911: Customers don’t notice improvements

Published: 10/18/2021

Mat Roosa, LCSW-R NIATx Coach How do we know if a change is an improvement? Change teams and change leaders ask this question frequently. It often refers to the measures and data they’re using to monitor change results. But there is another and perhaps more meaningful way to ask this question: How do our customers […]

AMERSA People & Passion, Episode 6: Leveraging Media and Medicine to Reduce Stigma and Improve Access to Addiction Treatment

Published: 10/07/2021

The COVID-19 pandemic is distinct from other catastrophic events because of massive population exposure to ongoing trauma. Illness, death, loss, grief, job- and food-insecurity have led to increased substance use, return to use/relapse, overdose and death. In the face of widespread misinformation, accurate and engaging health messaging matters NOW more than ever. Health messaging should […]

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