Chestnut Health Systems

Chestnut Health Systems is the Coordinating Center for the JJ-TRIALS research collaborative funded through a grant award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 2013.  The Coordinating Center’s AIMS are: 1) to conduct a family of National Surveys targeting JJ Community Supervision, Juvenile Court Judges, and behavioral health providers to learn more about the current state of Juvenile Justice Community Supervision within the U.S. regarding: a) substance use, mental health and HIV risk screening, assessment, and referral, b) substance use and HIV risk prevention, and c) substance use and mental health treatment; 2) to coordinate each Research Center’s pre-implementation needs assessment; 3) to develop and manage a common data base infrastructure for the cross-site Research Implementation Studies; and 4) to provide state-of–the-art communications and logistical support for the steering committee, workgroups, training activities and data safety monitoring board.  Due to the complex nature of the Coordinating Center’s responsibilities, there are multiple PIs:  Dr. Christy Scott leading the national surveys and Dr. Michael Dennis leading the other aspects of the coordinating center.  Dr. Christy Scott is the Director of Chestnut’s Lighthouse Institute and an expert in recovery management, translational research and client outcome monitoring.  Dr. Scott has served as PI on numerous NIDA, CSAT, and SAMHSA funded grants, has published over 70 professional articles, and has chaired review groups for NIH.  Dr. Michael Dennis is the Senior Research Psychologist at Lighthouse Institute, the Director of its Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) Coordinating Center and an expert on adolescent treatment research, recovery management, measurement, translational research and analysis.   Dr. Dennis has been coordinating center director or co-PI of more than a dozen other adolescent treatment experiments and grant programs funded by CSAT, NIAAA and NIDA. He has published over 200 articles and chaired review groups and DSMBs for NIH.