Stakeholders in Recovery: Demands, Expectations, and Research Opportunities

A broad array of agencies, institutions, and individuals interact with community-based substance abuse treatment programs, providing resources or services and asserting demands and expectations in return. These relationships shape the environment in which treatment and community-based research take place, and themselves raise issues worthy of research attention. This article enumerates the stakeholders in one well-established program and describes the scope of the program’s efforts to accommodate these stakeholders, along with some of the complications and difficulties programs confront in their attempts to satisfy stakeholders, especially when their demands are unrealistic or their interests conflict. The article concludes by identifying research areas that could facilitate these relationships, enhancing their benefits for patients.