The article I chose dealt with need-service matching in substance abuse treatment and racial/ethnic differences in them.
The data was collected from 1992-1997 for the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study which was aimed to better improve the treatment of minorities in substance abuse clinics. The sample consisted of 3142 clients (1812 African Americans, 486 Latinos, and 844 Whites.) The study showed that minorities are undeserved compared to Whites in the substance abuse service system.
This research was conducted because of a growing literature review that seemed to lean towards a race bias in the substance abuse system. This led to the study in the present article. The research method was a longitudinal study in which they evaluated these clients over a 5-year span. While it goes much more in detail, this was the main finding: Minorities are treated more poorly than whites in all areas of substance abuse treatments.
These results shocked me because they are still fairly recent. It seems as if stereotypes are still alive and present in our society and we perhaps still act on them unconsciously. It's sad to see that there hasn't been much improvement in this area and hopefully we can continually work towards better improving our substance abuse systems.
References:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2975433/
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