Disseminating contingency management to increase attendance in two community substance abuse treatment centers: Lessons learned

Although contingency management (CM) has been shown to be effective in substance use treatments, community adoption has been slow. To increase dissemination of CM into community practice, two community treatment programs collaborated with university faculty investigators to design, implement, and evaluate low-cost, prize-based CM interventions delivered by treatment staff using Petry's (2000) fishbowl technique. A pre–post study design was used to evaluate the impact of CM on outpatient group attendance. All clients attending the targeted outpatient groups at both treatment programs were eligible to participate. Group attendance was significantly positively impacted after intervention implementation. This is one of the first studies demonstrating successful implementation of CM by community treatment program counselors within their existing treatment groups. The discussion focuses on practical lessons learned during the planning and implementation of the interventions.