M. Katherine Kraft

The Active Living Research Program: Six Years of Grantmaking

Changes in policies and built environments are advocated as part of efforts to increase physical activity, but in 2001 the knowledge base to inform these changes was limited. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation addressed this deficit by initiating Active Living Research (ALR). The mission of ALR was to stimulate and support research that could guide the improvement of environments, policies, and practices to promote active living. The programs goals were to (1) build the evidence base about environmental and policy factors related to physical activity, (2) build the capacity of researchers in multiple fields to collaborate, and (3) inform and facilitate policy change. To build the evidence base, 121 grants were supported with

The Evolution of Substance Abuse Treatment in Juvenile Justice

12.5 million. Efforts were made to support new investigators, fund investigators from numerous disciplines, and increase the demographic diversity of researchers. Activities to build capacity to conduct collaborative research included annual conferences, journal supplements, seminars for multiple disciplines, and the posting of environmental measures. Coordination with Active Living Leadership was a primary means of communicating research to policymakers. Other activities to facilitate the application of research included research summaries written for nonresearchers, collaborations with Active Living by Design, several components of the website (www.activelivingresearch.org), and using policy relevance as a funding criterion. Two independent evaluations were accomplished, and they concluded that ALR made progress on all three goals. ALR has been renewed through 2012. The new mission is to use a

The Second Active Living Research Conference: Signs of Maturity

15.4 million research budget to contribute to reversing the childhood obesity epidemic, especially among youth in the highest-risk groups.

The Adolescent Addiction Treatment Workforce: Status, Challenges, and Strategies to Address their Particular Needs

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the scope of substance abuse and related problems among juvenile offenders, and describes three models of addressing the problem based on a review of current approaches, ranging from Treatment Alternatives to Street Crimes programs (TASC), to juvenile drug courts, to an integrated treatment network model. The relevant strengths and weaknesses of each in supporting lasting change in substance-abusing juvenile offenders and their families are presented, and a call to action is offered for communities wishing to aim their interventions innovatively and precisely in the direction of substance abuse among their delinquent youth.

Editors' Introduction: Exploring Policy Challenges and Options: Improving Treatment for Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders

This special issue highlights some of the papers presented at the second annual Active Living Research (ALR) Conference in February 2005. Each represents an important building block in developing a comprehensive knowledge base concerning environmental and policy influences on physical activity. In the summer of 2000 when the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Board of Trustees approved the concept paper for what would become Active Living Research, none of us could have imagined how quickly this evidence base would emerge. The program staff of RWJF was charged with developing grantmaking strategies that would lead to better approaches to increase population physical activity levels. The 1996 Surgeon General’s report on physical activity had clearly demonstrated the health benefits of exercise, yet health educators, exercise physiologists, and others had shown limited impact in significantly increasing the number of people engaging in even moderate levels of physical activity. 1 RWJF was eager to stimulate substantial improvements in a behavior that had such potential for improving the health of all Americans, as they had with smoking. Physical activity was determined to be an appropriate and worthy target. Much has been written about using ecological models to promote health behavior change, and the benefits of targeting environmental and policy solutions to change population level behavior are generally accepted. 2-7 However, few foundations have invested in developing and evaluating these types of interventions. RWJF has been unique in its understanding of environmental action strategies and its willingness to support policy research to inform those approaches. (See RWJF initiatives such as A Matter of Degree, Reducing Underage Drinking Through Coalitions, Smokeless States and the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program, for example.) As the first step in creating a social change strategy designed to increase population physical activity levels, Active Living Research was funded to investigate which environments and what policies would have the greatest potential to impact physical activity. Initial studies focused on developing and validating measures of the built environment for use in establishing a systematic evidence base. Measurement studies were followed by correlational studies to help determine the relationships between the environment and physical activity levels. Some of the papers in this special issue report on these initial measurement and correlation studies.

Book Reviews : Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. By Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997,320 pp.,

Abstract Treating youth with substance use problems presents unique challenges, distinct from those of adults, that add to the complexity of recruiting and retaining a qualified adolescent treatment workforce. Youth who need treatment are often involved in an array of systems (i.e., health, legal, and social) and use substances for a variety of reasons, requiring providers to have a unique set of treatment practices and proficiencies. The intent of this article is to highlight the current understanding of the issues facing the alcohol and other drug treatment workforce and to provide an overview of strategies people are or could be using to build and maintain a workforce that can effectively deliver care for adolescents. †The authors would like to recognize the research support provided by Jesse Orleans.

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The need to improve the treatment of substance use disorders in the United States has received increasing national attention. In 1998, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) started the National Treatment Plan Initiative, “to provide an opportunity for the field to reach a working consensus on how best to improve substance abuse treatment and then pursue action to effect needed change” (CSAT 2000: iii). This effort, examining system needs across the age spectrum, resulted in five overarching guidelines: invest for results, “no wrong door” to treatment, commit to quality, change attitudes and build partnerships (CSAT 2000:4). To extend the work of the National Treatment Plan Initiative to focus on issues in the treatment of adolescents with substance use disorders (SUD), CSAT and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation jointly sponsored a national summit on adolescent substance abuse treatment in the fall of 2002. The summit addressed two tracks: clinical treatment issues and the development of a treatment system for adolescents with SUD in the United States. Articles addressing clinical issues were published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs in March 2004. This companion volume includes nine articles addressing policy issues raised at the summit, which are organized broadly around five

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check to cover their housing expenses. The women also used a range of work, network, and agency-based strategies, most of which were legal, to make ends meet. To determine the amount of income it really takes to care for a family, Edin and Lein calculated the actual expenses of both groups of women. They estimated that a mother and two children require an income of at least

AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CREATING ACTIVE LIVING COMMUNITIES

16,000 a year to be self-sufficient-a figure that strongly challenges the current poverty-level standards. This close