The current and future relationship of basic research and intervention research in social work practice in the addictions: a conversation with Michael Fendrich, PhD

Abstract

Social Work practitioners have become receptive to the need to seek out and utilize empirically support interventions, or evidence-based interventions as they are more commonly known. While these practitioners have become adept at recognizing such interventions, they may be less skillful at seeking out research that does not seem directly related to practice, or basic nonintervention research, supporting interventions. This relationship between intervention research and basic research is explored in the current discussion. For social workers, access to research is critical in supporting good clinical decisionmaking as to who receives services, how services are provided, and policy that undergirds practice. Many agency administrators are coming to believe that practitioners should be integral in decisions about what get researched, even though they may feel such concerns are disconnected from their everyday duties with clients and communities (Romeo, 2018). At the same time, funding bodies are focusing on implementation research to encourage systematic application of research findings to practice. Moving from basic science research to practice is a principal goal of facilitating evidenced-based service delivery (Olswang & Prelock, 2015), however this remains a significant challenge. Research-based partnerships have certainly been recommended in many educational and social service areas to accomplish the goal (Goldstein et al., 2019), but these have also proved difficult to implement in complex settings. It seems critical to build some consensus in the social work environment that supports and values research in substance use treatment. It has been advised that components of this could include the development of more effective communication networks, better links between researchers and clinicians, and greater involvement of practitioners in the research process (Hemsley-Brown and Sharp (2010). The current state of this process is the focus of our discussion today. We are speaking with Dr. Michael Fendrich, the Scientific Director of Advocate Aurora Research Institute in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was formerly the Associate Dean for Research at the University of Connecticut, where he is Professor Emeritus, and the Director of the Center for Applied Behavioral Health Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Before that, he was a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago.