Sexual Risk Reduction Interventions for Patients Attending Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinics in the United States: A Meta-Analytic Review, 1986 to Early 2009

Sexually transmitted disease (STD) patients are more likely to experience a future STD including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of behavioral interventions to reduce sexual risk behavior and incident STDs among patients attending STD clinics in the United States. A meta-analysis of 32 studies with 48 separate interventions targeting STD patients (N = 67,538) was conducted. Independent raters coded study, sample, and intervention characteristics. Effect sizes, using both fixed- and random-effects models, were calculated. Potential moderators of intervention efficacy were assessed. Relative to controls, intervention participants increased their condom use and had fewer incident STDs, including HIV, across assessment intervals (d ₊s ranging from 0.05 to 0.64). Several sample (e.g., age and ethnicity) and intervention features (e.g., targeting intervention to a specific group) moderated the efficacy of the intervention. Behavioral interventions targeted to STD clinic patients reduce sexual risk behavior and prevent HIV/STDs. Widespread use of behavioral interventions in STD clinics should be a public health priority.     

Animal-Assisted Interventions for School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Research has indicated beneficial effects of Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAIs) for children with Autism. However, there is a dearth of...     

Exercise Interventions for Cancer Survivors: A Meta-Analysis of Quality of Life Outcomes

Background  

Exercise improves quality of life (QOL) in cancer survivors, although characteristics of efficacious exercise interventions for this population have not been identified.     

Meta-Analysis of Caregiver-Directed Psychosocial Interventions for Schizophrenia

With the recent movement toward a personal-recovery paradigm to treat schizophrenia, the locus of mental health care delivery has shifted toward community-based care. Family caregivers comprise a substantial component of that community, and are often providing care for longer periods, but often have no formal training or support. Caregiver-directed psychosocial interventions (CDPI) have been developed to train and assist caregivers in their efforts to maximize the odds of treatment success for those in their care. This meta-analysis compared CDPI versus treatment as usual (TAU) on outcomes such as hospitalization, relapse, non-compliance, and “other outcomes” (emergency services utilization, suicide attempt, and death). A systematic literature search (2005–2015) was conducted to identify randomized controlled trials of outpatient administered CDPI versus TAU to treat adult patients recovering from schizophrenia. Relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence intervals derived via random effects meta-analysis were calculated to compare CDPI versus TAU on the aforementioned outcomes. Eighteen of the 693 citations were retained for analysis. Overall RR for CDPI versus TAU suggested improved outcomes associated with CDPI: hospitalization [0.62 (0.46, 0.84) p?<?0.00001], relapse [0.58 (0.47, 0.73) p?<?0.00001] and other outcomes [0.70 (0.19, 2.57) p?=?0.59]. CDPI was associated with significantly better compliance with medication and clinical activities combined [0.38 (0.19, 0.74) p?=?0.005]. Medication compliance alone favored CDPI but was non-significant. Compliance with clinical activities alone favored CDPI significantly [0.22 (0.11, 0.47) p?<?0.00001]. CDPI is associated with reductions in hospitalization, relapse, and treatment non-compliance.     

Costing Behavioral Interventions: A Practical Guide to Enhance Translation

Background/Purpose  Cost and cost effectiveness of behavioral interventions are critical parts of dissemination and implementation into non-academic settings. Due to the lack of indicative data and policy makers’ increasing demands for both program effectiveness and efficiency, cost analyses can serve as valuable tools in the evaluation process. Methods  To stimulate and promote broader use of practical techniques that can be used to efficiently estimate the implementation costs of behavioral interventions, we propose a set of analytic steps that can be employed across a broad range of interventions. Results/Conclusions  Intervention costs must be distinguished from research, development, and recruitment costs. The inclusion of sensitivity analyses is recommended to understand the implications of implementation of the intervention into different settings using different intervention resources. To illustrate these procedures, we use data from a smoking reduction practical clinical trial to describe the techniques and methods used to estimate and evaluate the costs associated with the intervention. Estimated intervention costs per participant were $419, with a range of $276 to $703, depending on the number of participants.     

Interventions to Improve Outcomes for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - This meta-analysis examines the impact of parent interventions on outcomes for parents of children with ASD. A systematic review of the literature...     

Evidence-Based Behavioral Interventions for Repetitive Behaviors in Autism

Restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) are a core symptom of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). There has been an increased research emphasis on repetitive behaviors; however, this research primarily has focused on phenomenology and mechanisms. Thus, the knowledge base on interventions is lagging behind other areas of research. The literature suggests there are evidence-based practices to treat “lower order” RRBs in ASD (e.g., stereotypies); yet, there is a lack of a focused program of intervention research for “higher order” behaviors (e.g., insistence on sameness). This paper will (a) discuss barriers to intervention development for RRBs; (b) review evidence-based interventions to treat RRBs in ASD, with a focus on higher order behaviors; and (c) conclude with recommendations for practice and research.     

Early Intensive Behavioral Interventions: Selecting behaviors for treatment and assessing treatment effectiveness

Early Intensive Behavioral Interventions (EIBI) is well established as the most effective treatment for young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A hallmark of this intervention model is the bundling of multiple behaviors simultaneously for intervention. With the addition of various comorbid problems such as challenging behaviors and psychopathology, it becomes incumbent on clinicians to prioritize behaviors for intervention. Based on the studies conducted to date, little has been done in this regard. Additionally, general measures of ASD, adaptive behavior and cognitive functioning are primarily used to assess outcomes, many of these measures were not designed to assess treatment effects, and little evidence is available to link intervention to specific items on these scales.     

Meta-Analysis of RCTs of Technology-Assisted Parent-Mediated Interventions for Children with ASD

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Technology-assisted parent-mediated interventions improve accessibility and are acceptable but not proven to be effective. We conducted a systematic...     

A Review of Behavioral Interventions for Psychotic Verbal Behavior in People With Intellectual Disabilities

Individuals with intellectual disabilities who exhibit psychotic verbal behavior are at increased risk for hospitalization and dependence on external support. Traditionally, medication is the clinical treatment of choice for this behavior. This article selectively reviews the existing literature within the field of behavior analysis on reducing psychotic verbal behavior in adults with intellectual disabilities. Both contingency-based and function-based treatments were effective. There was evidence that differential reinforcement, noncontingent reinforcement, and response-cost procedures were effective. The implications for future treatment and research on delusional verbal behavior are discussed.