On Monday-Wednesday, April 23-25, the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx) will host the first NIATx Summit in San Antonio. Addiction treatment providers, payers, policymakers and clinicians will come together to celebrate recent successes in treatment access and retention, unveil a national campaign and learn cutting-edge practices to improve the quality of treatment service.

Established in 2003, NIATx is a partnership among the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Paths to Recovery program, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment's Strengthening Treatment Access and Retention program and a number of independent addiction treatment organizations. A division of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, NIATx helps substance abuse and mental health treatment organizations improve consumer access to and retention in treatment.

Through a series of targeted programs, NIATx works to counter the staggering statistics for addiction in America:

• An estimated 23 million Americans age 12 and older need treatment for substance use disorders and addictions.

• Less than 10 percent of them actually receive treatment.

• Dropout rates among those who do approach 30 percent.

Since 2003, NIATx has helped treatment centers make dramatic improvements in access to and retention in treatment. NIATx's founding members have taken part in three programs - Paths to Recovery, Strengthening Treatment Access and Retention, and the State Pilot Project - to improve their operations and capacity. Using the NIATx model of process improvement and their existing resources, these founding members reduced their wait times by 35 percent, reduced their no-shows by 33 percent, increased their admissions by 22 percent and increased their continuations through treatment by 22 percent.

Louise Howell, director of Kentucky River Community Care, s
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Contact: Maureen Fitzgerald
mmfitzgerald@chsra.wisc.edu
608-890-0937
University of Wisconsin-Madison
5-Mar-2007