A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D.
Professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and founder and director of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, Dr. McLellan is widely recognized for improving the quality of drug abuse treatment. He developed two of the most practical and widely used methods of assessing addiction severity and treatment success: the Addiction Severity Index and the Treatment Services Review.
These tools were created with the view that substance abuse and addiction could not be adequately understood and addiction treatments could not be effectively delivered if there were no relevant real-world methods to gauge them. These instruments have helped to revolutionize the delivery of treatment and assisted researchers and clinicians in gaining more insight into the efficacy of treatment. His work has also promoted better understanding of the factors that lead to treatment success and fostered greater understanding of addiction as a chronic illness that can be treated in many settings, reduced its stigma, and provided means for earlier identification and prevention.
He will use his award grant to conduct an exhaustive review of treatment literature in order to produce a consumers' guide and rating scale for addiction treatments. He intends to rate the efficacy of treatments using the format published in the magazine "Consumer Reports."
Source: Innovators Combating Substance Abuse
