Intervention to Reduce Injection Drug Use

Intervention to Reduce Injection Drug Use

This is a five-year prospective randomized trial comparing two intervention conditions designed to facilitate substance abuse treatment entry and enhance retention in order to reduce the behaviors associated with HIV and HCV risk among injection drug users (IDUs) and to improve client overall functioning. The overall goal of this project is to compare strengths-based case-management (CM) to an enhanced version of CM that uses case managers to facilitate a therapeutic alliance (CM/FTA) among out-of-treatment IDUs in Denver.

Inclusion Criteria:

• opiate injection at least 3 times a week during the last 6-months
• 18 years of age or older
• no drug abuse treatment in the 30-days prior to the interview
• not transient
• no known reason (e.g. pending jail time) why they will not be available for follow-up interviews
• not involved in Project Safe research activities in the previous 12 months
• willing to meet with an Addiction Research and Treatment Services (methadone clinic) counselor
• eligible to be treated at ARTS

Exclusion Criteria:

• too intoxicated or impaired mentally to voluntarily consent to participate in the project and/or respond to the interview