Concerned about your own or
someone else’s drug use?

Methamphetamine (MA) has become the second most common drug of concern in clients attending Alcohol and other Drug (AoD) services in Australia, after alcohol. However, we have had limited ability to describe the characteristics of people who use MA in AoD services, their participation in health services (including hospital, emergency department, mental health), or to describe the outcomes of AoD specialist treatment. Our data has hitherto been restricted to National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) data for AoD treatment services, small cohort studies or evaluation of single-site clinical programs.

The recent implementation of electronic clinical information systems across NSW Health AoD Services, and the approval to establish a linked statewide register for the AoD client population in NSW (using unique client identifiers) opens up new research opportunities to better understand the client population, the services they use, and their substance use, health and social outcomes. This project will, for the first time, focus attention on MA use in these newly established data systems. Specifically, the project will establish the mechanisms that will allow us to

1. Examine and report upon client characteristics, service utilization, and treatment outcomes for clients in NSW Health AoD services by examining electronic clinical information routinely collected as part of AoD treatment (at treatment entry and subsequent reviews).
2. Analyze the psychometric properties of the Australian Treatment Outcomes Profile (ATOP), the clinical review tool used in NSW Health AoD services and across Australia, in MA users attending treatment. This involves secondary analysis of data currently being collected as part of the LiMA clinical trial;
3. Provide recommendations on how to best embed pragmatic clinical trial designs into routine care for MA users, building upon the ‘data platform’ established through this project, and forming the basis for future clinical intervention research projects in AoD treatment services.