Program
of Research to Integrate Substance Use Issues into Mainstream
Health Care
"PRISM"
PRISM is one of the first projects of its kind to harness the addiction and medical research fields to improve treatment outcomes in health care. By developing empirical evidence that alcohol and other drug use can affect the development, management and outcomes of common chronic medical conditions, even at levels below the threshold of addiction, the goal
of
PRISM is to improve quality in primary care by engaging physicians in
the management of
substance use and abuse.
PRISM was co-founded in 2002 by A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D. of the Treatment Research Institute and Barbara Turner, M.D. of the
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In its start-up phase, PRISM commissioned ten systematic literature reviews and five research grants, with findings published in respected medical journals and/or presented at conferences or other gatherings of medical professionals.
By late 2006, persuaded by the still-emerging body of evidence, four of the country’s most prestigious medical societies officially joined PRISM. The Society of General Internal Medicine (in the lead), the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, and the American Geriatrics Society are contributing their resources to sponsor more research and develop practice guidelines, quality of care principles, and physician education programs – all reflecting evidence-based information on the health effects of a broad spectrum of substance use behaviors.
Primary funding for PRISM comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, supplemented by the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.
