This is a tread on Faslink about the freezing of The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices data base. Elspeth Ross found only one reference to FASD in the data.

1. From: barry stanley brrstanley@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [FASD-Canadian-News] Trump administration freezes database of addiction and mental health programs
Date: January 12, 2018 at 11:08 AM
To: Elspeth Ross rosse@ncf.ca [FASD-Canadian-News] FASD-Canadian-News@yahoogroups.com, psoba via FASlink
faslink@googlegroups.com
I doubt that this will have any impact on fasd since all these interventions to reduce mental illnesses and addictions do not take into
consideration the role of preconceptual and prenatal alcohol consumption.
Barry
On Jan 11, 2018, at 12:09 PM, Elspeth Ross rosse@ncf.ca [FASD-Canadian-News] <FASD-Canadian-
News@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
NREPP "Federal health officials have suspended a program that helps thousands of professionals
and community groups across the country find effective interventions for preventing and treating
mental illness and substance use disorders..." [I only found 1 FASD program in the database]ER
https://tinyurl.com/y7pmsodg
Washington Post
Health Science
Trump administration freezes database of addiction and mental health programs
By Lena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin January 10 at 7:13 PM
[Photo] SAMHSA website, showing the NREPP has been discontinued. (SAMHSA)
(SAMHSA/SAMHSA)
Federal health officials have suspended a program that helps thousands of professionals and
community groups across the country find effective interventions for preventing and treating
mental illness and substance use disorders.
The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices
https://www.samhsa.gov/nrepp
is housed within the Health and Human Services Department’s Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration.
The registry, which was launched in 1997, offers a database of hundreds of mental health and
substance abuse programs that have been assessed by an independent contractor and deemed
scientifically sound. Getting a program or therapeutic approach included in this registry amounts
to receiving federal recognition as an evidence-based practice. Mental health and addiction
specialists say they rely on this database as a key source for finding appropriate and effective
therapies.
Since 2015, the registry has also included evidence that certain interventions do not work, which
helps practitioners avoid wasting resources on those programs.
Administration officials confirmed that the contract for running the database has been terminated.
A new entity will take over the program’s duties. A director for that new group was announced
Monday, but no other staff is in place. Agency spokesman Brian Dominguez said Wednesday the
new entity is “working closely” with other parts of the agency to “institute an even more
scientifically rigorous approach to better inform the identification and implementation of evidence-
based programs and practices.”
Officials declined to say why the registry was suspended, nor did they give specifics about how the
new approach will work, when it will launch or whether existing validated programs will be
included.

2. included.
Agency officials froze the existing website in September, and no new postings have been added,
according to mental health advocacy groups. As a result, about 90 new programs that have been
reviewed and rated for their scientific merits since September are not available to the public, they
said.
“I know there are quite a number of new studies that could be breakthrough strategies for
prevention of psychiatric disorders, opiate addictions, autism spectrum disorders — any
number of things,” said Dennis Embry, president of Paxis Institute, a for-profit Arizona
organization that helps communities identify evidence-based practices for the prevention of
psychiatric disorders.
Asked about the freezing of the website, agency spokesman Christopher Garrett said Wednesday
that the agency’s job is to “lead the efforts to rapidly institute evidence-based practices in all
behavioral health treatment programs” in the country.
“The federal government should not be in the business of having a single contractor determine
winners and losers in behavioral health care,” he said.
While agency officials work on the new approach, the registry will remain online, officials said.
The possibility of losing the registry, or of having it essentially frozen, has outraged mental health
professionals and members of Congress. Mental health professionals are especially concerned that
moving the process in-house could politicize the process of evaluating programs.
“NREPP is one of the most important tools we have. Nobody has a financial stake,” said Catherine
Tucker, president of the Association for Child and Adolescent Counseling, a membership
organization for counselors who work with young people. She added: “It’s an impartial,
nonpartisan, trustworthy source that represents thousands and thousands of hours of work.”
That responsibility will now be led by a new entity within the agency, the National Mental Health
and Substance Use Policy Laboratory, or Policy Lab. The lab was authorized under a sweeping
health-care law passed in 2016. Known as the 21st Century Cures Act, the law increased
funding for research into cancer and other diseases, and also made changes to the mental health
system, including the creation of a new assistant secretary for mental health and substance use at
SAMHSA.
Trump’s nominee for that position, Elinore McCance-Katz, a psychiatrist and former medical
director at SAMHSA, was confirmed last summer. In testimony to Congress last month,
she said the primary focus of the Policy Lab is to “periodically review programs and activities”
relating to the diagnosis, prevention, treatment and recovery from mental illness and substance
use disorders. The lab will also identify programs or activities “that are duplicative and are not
evidence-based, effective or efficient,” she said.
The Policy Lab will also play a role in awarding grants to state and local governments, educational
institutions and nonprofits to develop evidence-based interventions, she said.
The move has unsettled lawmakers from both parties.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who included a provision in the 1997 Drug-Free Communities Act that
requires any prevention programs authorized by the law be certified under the registry, said in a
statement that when it came to the suspension, “I’m concerned and looking into it.”
“I’ve long believed we must use federal funds for evidence-based programs that work and we must
continue to make this a priority,” Portman said.

3. Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, sent a letter to
McCance-Katz just last week praising the registry as a “critical tool in fighting addiction.”
Earlier this week, “I was shocked to learn that the NREPP contract has been terminated as an
opioid epidemic continues to shake our nation,” Meng said. She has sent another letter to ask
why. She noted that every single discussion of the registry in the agency’s budget plan indicates
that it will be funded through September 2018.
“I’m determined to find out why SAMHSA has made such a mind-boggling decision,” she said in a
statement.
The agency has been criticized by some outsiders as paying insufficient attention to the treatment
needs of the seriously mentally ill. One of its most ardent detractors was former
representative Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), who pushed for changes such as
the new assistant secretary position at SAMHSA during bitter hearings
The registry itself is not without controversy. In July, Dennis Gorman, a professor in Texas A&M
University’s Department of Epidemiology Biostatistics, published a paper in the International
Journal of Drug Policy saying that the database was not “weeding out” ineffective programs.
Between September 2015 and January 2017, the paper notes, 113 interventions were added to the
registry. Of these, the evidence for 14 percent of them consisted of a single, non-peer-reviewed
report, and 45 percent of them relied primarily on a single peer-reviewed article.
Amy Sechrist, a certified prevention specialist at Compass Mark, a nonprofit in Pennsylvania that
works to reduce substance addictions, said in an interview that while the registry has had its
problems, “we need leadership and clearinghouses for interventions that work.”
“We are always communicating to our clients, the public and legislators that prevention is a
science,” said Sechrist, whose group uses interventions listed in the database. “We look to
SAMHSA for prevention science,” she added, and if they stop offering it, that undermines how
Americans view the programs her agency and others offer.
Agency officials notified the contractor Dec. 28 that it was terminating the contract for the registry
“for the convenience of the government,” according to an email sent by the contractor to
participants in the program. The cancellation means all activities have been suspended, said the
contractor, Development Services Group Inc. of Bethesda, Md.
Scott Bryant-Comstock, president and chief executive of the Children’s Mental Health Network,
said he spoke to a senior agency official about the termination but didn’t get clear answers about
what strategies will be considered “evidence-based” under a new system.
Referring to the acrimonious House hearings on mental health that led to the creation of the Policy
Lab and other agency changes, “for advocates, it’s really important to ensure this doesn’t just
become solely focused on the seriously mentally ill and doesn’t take into account some of the
prevention things,” Bryant-Comstock said.
Dewey Cornell, a professor of education at the University of Virginia and the director of the state’s
Youth Violence Project, said it took years to build the database.
“It keeps people up in the field with usable practices,” Cornell said. “Before that, people would go to
the journals to look for evidence-based research, but most counselors don’t have the time for that.”
Amy Ellis Nutt contributed to this article.

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Lena H. Sun is a national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on health. Follow
@bylenasun
Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's senior national affairs correspondent, covering how the
new administration is transforming a range of U.S. policies and the federal government itself. She
is the author of two books—one on sharks, and another on Congress, not to be confused with each
other—and has worked for the Post since 1998. Follow @eilperin
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Posted by: Elspeth Ross <rosse@ncf.ca>
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