Influence networks among substance abuse treatment clinics: implications for the dissemination of innovations

Understanding influence networks among substance abuse treatment clinics may speed the diffusion of innovations. The purpose of this study was to describe influence networks in Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Washington and test two expectations, using social network analysis: (1) Social network measures can identify influential clinics; and (2) Within a network, some weakly connected clinics access out-of-network sources of innovative evidence-based practices and can spread these innovations through the network. A survey of 201 clinics in a parent study on quality improvement provided the data. Network measures and sociograms were obtained from adjacency matrixes created by UCINet. We used regression analysis to determine whether network status relates to clinics' adopting innovations. Findings suggest that influential clinics can be identified and that loosely linked clinics were likely to join the study sooner than more influential clinics but were not more likely to have improved outcomes than other organizations. Findings identify the structure of influence networks for SUD treatment organizations and have mixed results on how those structures impacted diffusion of the intervention under study. Further study is necessary to test whether use of knowledge of the network structure will have an effect on the pace and breadth of dissemination of innovations.