Implementing the teen marijuana check-up in schools—a study protocol

BACKGROUND: Substance misuse is now encountered in settings beyond addiction specialty care, with schools a point-of-contact for student access to behavioral health services. Marijuana is a leading impetus for adolescent treatment admissions despite declining risk perception, for which the Teen Marijuana Check-Up (TMCU)—a tailored adaptation of motivational enhancement therapy—offers an efficacious service option. To bridge the knowledge gap concerning effective and affordable technical assistance strategies for implementing empirically supported services, the described trial will test such a strategy to facilitate school-based TMCU implementation. METHODS: A type II effectiveness/implementation hybrid trial will test a novel strategy for a TMCU purveyor to provide technical assistance on an ‘as-needed’ basis when triggered by a fidelity drift alarm bell, compared to resource-intensive ‘gold-standard’ technical assistance procedures of prior efficacy trials. Trial procedures adhere to the EPIS framework as follows: (1) initial mixed-method exploration of the involved school contexts and identification of TMCU interventionist candidates in elicitation interviews; (2) interventionist preparation via a formally evaluated training process involving a two-day workshop and sequence of three training cases; (3) post-training implementation for 24 months for which trained interventionists are randomized to ‘as-needed’ or ‘gold-standard’ technical assistance and self-referring students randomized (in 2:1 ratio) to TMCU or waitlist/control; and (4) examination of TMCU sustainment via interventionist completion of biannual outcome assessments, cost analyses, and exit interviews. Hypothesized effects include non-differential influence of the competing technical assistance methods on both TMCU fidelity and intervention effectiveness, with lesser school costs for the ‘as-needed’ than ‘gold-standard’ technical assistance and greater reduction in the frequency of marijuana use expected among TMCU-exposed students relative to those assigned to waitlist/control. DISCUSSION: This trial—occurring in Washington state as legislative, fiscal, and sociocultural forces converge to heighten exposure of American adolescents to marijuana-related harms—is set to advance understanding of best implementation practices for this and other efficacious, school-based interventions through examination of a data-driven technical assistance method. If shown to be clinically useful and affordable, the concept of a fidelity drift alarm could be readily translated to other empirically supported services and in other health settings. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03111667 registered 7 April 2017.