Suggestions for Culturally Adapted Interventions to Treat Substance Use in Immigrants

Immigrant populations experience unique sociocultural, structural, and linguistic barriers that shape substance use disorder (SUD) risk, treatment engagement, and outcomes. Conventional treatment models often fail to account for these complexities, contributing to disparities in care. This systematic review evaluates specific culturally adapted interventions for SUD treatment in immigrant populations across diverse sociocultural and regional contexts, identifying which strategies improve engagement and outcomes, and highlighting gaps in their development and evaluation. A systematic search of EMBASE, Ovid MEDLINE, and Web of Science identified studies examining addiction treatment in immigrant populations. After screening and eligibility assessment, 19 studies were included. Data, including the population and treatment or intervention studied, major findings, and relevant remaining gaps, were extracted for assessment. We extracted data from 19 studies out of 254 screened. Among the included studies, culturally adapted interventions fell into one of several key domains: language concordance, structural barrier reduction, stigma-targeted approaches, culturally rooted practices, increasing provider cultural competence, social support integration, and treatment of co-occurring mental health disorders. Interventions that addressed linguistic barriers and were culturally tailored to the immigrant population were most consistently associated with improved engagement and retention, while structural and stigma-related barriers remained major determinants of treatment access. Effective interventions for immigrants with SUDs require culturally informed, person-centered, and community-oriented approaches that account for the unique lived experiences of immigrant populations. Future research should prioritize expanding culturally tailored interventions across diverse sociocultural and regional contexts to better capture the heterogeneity of immigrant experiences, along with further clinical research to evaluate their effectiveness and real-world applicability.