Preventing Drug Use in Low Income Clinic Populations

The proposed study will address the critical need to reduce illegal drug use, in particular drug use, and the occurrence of drug-related harm in low-income racially diverse patient populations at urban primary care safety-net clinics. Since they are at risk for accelerated trajectories to drug dependence once drug use begins, low-income racially diverse populations pose particular concern for public health policy makers and drug-use prevention efforts. The study will be the first to standardize drug screening and primary-care clinician delivered brief intervention among racially diverse "at risk" drug users, that is users with casual or frequent use without the physiological or psychological manifestations of dependence, to reduce their 'at risk' use of drugs, and it may effectively interrupt their pathway to dependence.