Consideration of race/ethnicity in adolescent substance abuse treatment outcome studies

Substance use among youth continues to be a major concern in the United States. Several treatments have been developed for youth, but their external validity racially/ethnically diverse populations have not been evaluated for use in ethnic populations. The purpose of this paper was to examine the extent to which adolescent substance use treatment outcome studies have considered race/ethnicity-related factors in the design, implementation, and evaluation of treatments to determine degree of generalizability in racially/ethnically diverse populations. The findings underscored (1) discrepancies between treatment needs of racially/ethnically diverse youth and substances targeted in treatment, (2) the urgent need to focus on culturally sensitive recruitment strategies to increase participation of ethnic youth in treatment research, and (3) consideration of race/ethnicity in adolescent substance abuse treatment research has not changed significantly over the past three decades, with most studies providing limited information to answer the question of With whom are the treatments efficacious