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CompletedNCT02140359Updated Nov 24, 2017

Enhancing Housing First Programs With a Social Network Substance Use Intervention

An interventional study of Motivational Network Interview in Alcohol Drinking, Drug Abuse and HIV, sponsored by RAND. Completed at 2 sites in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2017-11-24.

Sponsored by RAND · Not applicable, Interventional, and Supportive care

Phase
Not applicable
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
50
Allocation
Randomized
Ages
18 Years and older
Sex
All
01

Study summary

Housing First programs are promising approaches to transitioning substance using chronically homeless adults to affordable housing. However, Housing First programs need to provide support to residents to adjust to their changing social environments. The proposed project fulfills a critical gap by developing an electronic tool for a social network intervention using motivational interviewing techniques as well as results of a pilot test of the tool. The hypothesis to be tested is that Housing First residents who are given the intervention will be significantly more motivated to change their drinking, drug use, sexual risk behaviors, and social networks compared to controls receiving usual care.

Read the detailed description

We propose a 3-year study to develop and pilot test a social network substance use and HIV-risk intervention for permanent supportive housing program residents in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. The intervention will be developed for residents at the Skid Row Housing Trust (SRHT), one of the largest Housing First providers in Los Angeles. Housing First residents are not required to abstain from alcohol and drugs as a requirement of their residency. There is some evidence that providing housing rapidly to chronically homeless persons--along with support--helps to reduce substance use and HIV risk behaviors in the short term because homelessness is the primary cause of high-risk behavior. However, the evidence thus far is limited. One aspect that has not received much research attention is the needs of Housing First residents for support to transition their social networks while transitioning out of homeless into residency in a Housing First program. New residents are exposed to a wide range of potentially negative social influences while also having greater potential to reconnect with lost positive ties. This project will develop a social network intervention to residents of SRHT in order to increase their knowledge about their social networks and enhance their motivation to make necessary changes to improve their ability to reduce or continue to abstain from high-risk behavior. The intervention sessions will enhance the weekly support meetings that SRHT case workers already conduct with new residents during their first 6 months of residency. Case workers will be trained to deliver the 30-minute intervention sessions using a motivational interviewing style. The intervention will be developed so that case managers can deliver it with the aid of an electronic tablet device. The tablet will guide them in collecting information about the residents' social networks and then display several diagrams highlighting various aspects of the residents' networks. They will then use motivational interviewing techniques to guide residents to think about how their network currently functions, how they would like it to function, and what steps they can take to make changes necessary to achieve goals related to reducing their substance use and sexual risk behaviors. The intervention will be delivered by case managers across four sessions (at baseline and at two-week intervals). We anticipate that residents who participate in this intervention will develop new strategies in their interactions with their social networks that will facilitate a reduction in their high-risk behavior.

02

Conditions studied

  • Alcohol Drinking
  • Drug Abuse
  • HIV

Keywords

  • homelessness
  • housing first
  • social networks
  • drug abuse
  • alcohol use
  • HIV
03

In context

Substance-Related Disorders

2,124 studies on the registry are indexed under Substance-Related Disorders; 393 are open to participants now.

This study's enrollment of 50 is below the median of 108 across 1,727 interventional studies indexed under Substance-Related Disorders.

Browse Substance-Related Disorders studies →

Lead sponsor

RAND is the lead sponsor of 110 studies on the registry; 6 are open to participants now.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
18 Years and older
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
Yes

Inclusion criteria

  • New residents of Skid Row Housing Trust receiving permanent supportive housing

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Age younger than 18
  • Does not speak English
  • Cognitively impaired either by identifying those having a diagnosis of dementia in the new resident intake interview or using the Short Blessed Scale Exam)
  • Does not screen positive for past -year harmful AOD use using the AUDIT-C (a score > 4 for men and > 3 for women) and DAST (a score greater than 2).
05

Study design

Phase
Not applicable
Primary purpose
Supportive care
Allocation
Randomized
Intervention model
Parallel assignment
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
50 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • No intervention
    Control Group: Usual Care

    Residents of a housing first permanent supporting housing program will be randomly assigned to this arm after screening and baseline assessments. They will meet with case managers according to the usual procedures for new residents and will be given a standard case manager interaction.

  • Experimental
    Motivational Network Interview Recipients

    Residents of a housing first permanent supporting housing program will be randomly assigned to this arm after screening and baseline assessments. They will meet roughly every two weeks with a case manager and answer questions about their social network, will be shown visual feedback about their networks, and will participate in a motivational interview conducted by the case managers. The questions and visualizations will be facilitated by an electronic tool for presenting screens with questions, capturing responses, processing and visualizing social network data.

    Behavioral: Motivational Network Interview

Interventions

  • BehavioralMotivational Network Interview

    Residents of a housing first permanent supporting housing program will be randomly assigned to this arm after screening and baseline assessments. They will meet roughly every two weeks with a case manager and answer questions about their social network, will be shown visual feedback about their networks, and will participate in a motivational interview conducted by the case managers. The questions and visualizations will be facilitated by an electronic tool for presenting screens with questions, capturing responses, processing and visualizing social network data.

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Readiness to change alcohol and other drug use

    Measured with 12 item Readiness to Change Questionnaire (RTCQ) and a one item Contemplation Ladder

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (post intervention)

  2. Readiness to change risky sexual behavior

    11 item Readiness to Change Risky Sexual Behavior (RTCQ-SB) scale a one item Contemplation Ladder

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (post intervention)

  3. Self efficacy to change alcohol and other drug use

    Measured with two questionnaire items that assess the participant's importance and self-efficacy to stop alcohol and other drug use and 4 items from the Alcohol Abstinence Self-Efficacy Scale (AASE) which measure how confident participants feel in their ability to abstain from alcohol use when depressed, relaxed, craving substances, and offered alcohol.

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (post intervention)

  4. Self efficacy to change risky sexual behavior

    Measured with 4 item Self-Efficacy to Use Condoms scale

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (post intervention)

  5. Self-efficacy to change social networks

    Two item ladder scale item measuring importance and self-efficacy to change social networks.

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (post intervention)

  6. Perceived Social Network support and approval/disapproval of alcohol, drug use, and risky sex.

    Measures of Perceived Social Support and ratings of network members on emotional closeness, drinking, drug use, safe-sex behavior, and approval/disapproval of high-risk behavior of social network members based on the Important People Drug and Alcohol Interview. Raw network data to provide measures will result from a personal network interview in which participants will name 20 network member and answer questions about each of them and their relationships with each other.

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (after intervention)

Secondary outcomes

  1. Drug and Alcohol use

    Assessed with a Timeline Followback calendar structured interview that measures alcohol and drug use through recall aided by a calendar. Participants will be asked quantity and intensity of drinking and drug use to calculate a quantity-frequency index for both drinking and drug use. Self-reports of non-use will be validated with a Oral Fluid Test.

    Time frame: Baseline and 13-14 weeks (after intervention is completed)

  2. HIV risk behavior

    Survey items asking if the participant engaged in unprotected sex and concurrent sexual relationships overall and with particular partners in the past 90 days.

    Time frame: baseline and 13-14 weeks (after intervention completion)

  3. Change in social network composition and structure

    Measures of network composition and structure will be constructed from raw network data. Raw network data result from a personal network interview in which participants will name 20 network member and answer questions about each of them and their relationships with each other.

    Time frame: baseline and 13-14 weeks (after intervention completion)

Other outcomes

  1. Satisfaction with Intervention

    Administration of the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8), an 8-item Likert-type measure of client feedback regarding services provided in a treatment program.

    Time frame: 13-14 weeks (after intervention)

07

Study locations

2 sites
  • Skid Row Housing Trust
    Los Angeles, California 90021, United States
  • RAND Corporation
    Santa Monica, California 90407, United States
08

References and documents

Publications

  • Kennedy DP, Osilla KC, Hunter SB, Golinelli D, Maksabedian Hernandez E, Tucker JS. Restructuring personal networks with a Motivational Interviewing social network intervention to assist the transition out of homelessness: A randomized control pilot study. PLoS One. 2022 Jan 21;17(1):e0262210. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262210. eCollection 2022. PubMed 35061795 ↗
  • Osilla KC, Kennedy DP, Hunter SB, Maksabedian E. Feasibility of a computer-assisted social network motivational interviewing intervention for substance use and HIV risk behaviors for housing first residents. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2016 Sep 7;11(1):14. doi: 10.1186/s13722-016-0061-x. PubMed 27604543 ↗
  • Kennedy DP, Hunter SB, Chan Osilla K, Maksabedian E, Golinelli D, Tucker JS. A computer-assisted motivational social network intervention to reduce alcohol, drug and HIV risk behaviors among Housing First residents. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2016 Mar 15;11(1):4. doi: 10.1186/s13722-016-0052-y. PubMed 26979982 ↗
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Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Nov 24, 2017, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
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Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT02140359
Lead sponsor
RAND
Responsible party
David Kennedy (Behavioral / Social Scientist, RAND) — Principal investigator
First posted
May 16, 2014
Start date
Jun 2015
Primary completion
Oct 2016
Completion
Jul 2017
Last update
Nov 24, 2017

Study contacts

David P Kennedy, PhD
principal investigator · RAND

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

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