An understanding of African American and Hispanic adolescent drug abuse occurs at the intersection of context, development, and behavior. The focus of this review is on the impact of racial/ethnic culture as one of the important contexts that influence adolescent development toward or away from prosocial behaviors. Because family plays a major role in both African American and Hispanic cultures, it is also a centerpiece of any discussion of adolescent development in these groups. This review on the state of the science in drug abuse for African American and Hispanic adolescents focuses on epidemiology, culturally specific risk and protective processes, and prevention and treatment research. From the perspective of a broad lens, specific minority groups such as African Americans and Hispanics would appear to have more in common than not. However, each of these groups encompasses considerable genetic, historical, social, and cultural heterogeneity. Investigation across such diversity will yield a more complete picture of the human condition.

Background: Research on women with substance use disorders has expanded, yet knowledge and implementation gaps remain. Methods: Drawing from topics discussed at the 2017 meeting of InWomen's in Montreal, Canada, this article reviews key progress in research on substance use among women, adolescents, and families to delineate priorities for the next generation of research. Results: The field has seen significant accomplishments in multiple domains, including the management of pregnant women with substance use and comorbid psychiatric disorders, caring for neonates in opioid withdrawal, greater inclusion of and treatment options for LGBTQ+

This article describes concrete strategies for conducting substance abuse research with ethnic minorities. Two issues associated with valid analysis, measurement and data analysis, are included. Both empirical (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis, item response theory, and regression) and nonempirical (e.g., focus groups, expert panels, pilot studies, and translation equivalence) approaches to improve measures are described. A discussion of the use of norms and cutoff scores derived from a different ethnic group along with the effects of the ethnicity of the interviewer or coder on measurement is included. The section on data analysis describes why the use of race-comparison designs may lead to misleading conclusions. Alternatives to race-comparison analysis including within-group and between-group analyses are described. The shortcomings of combining ethnic groups for analyses are discussed. The article ends with a list of recommendations for research with ethnic minorities.

BACKGROUND Multiple studies in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (CTN) demonstrate strategies for conducting effective substance abuse treatment research with racial/ethnic minorities (REMs). OBJECTIVES The objectives of this article are to describe lessons learned within the CTN to (1) enhance recruitment, retention, and other outcomes; (2) assess measurement equivalence; and (3) use data analytic plans that yield more information. METHOD This article includes background information and examples from multiple CTN studies on inclusion, measurement, and data analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Seven recommendations are included for conducting more effective research on REMs.

Limited empirical evidence concerning the efficacy of substance abuse treatments among African Americans reduces opportunities to evaluate and improve program efficacy. The current study, conducted as a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial conducted by the Clinical Trials Network of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, addressed this knowledge gap by examining the efficacy of motivational enhancement therapy (MET) compared with counseling as usual (CAU) among 194 African American adults seeking outpatient substance abuse treatment at 5 participating sites. The findings revealed higher retention rates among women in MET than in CAU during the initial 12 weeks of the 16-week study. Men in MET and CAU did not differ in retention. However, MET participants self-reported more drug-using days per week than participants in CAU. Implications for future substance abuse treatment research with African Americans are discussed.