Bridging diversity and family systems: Culturally informed and flexible family-based treatment for Hispanic adolescents.

Abstract

There is growing interest in identifying interventions that have been tested and found efficacious with minority families. This interest is fueled in part by the growth of Hispanics in the U.S. as well as by research findings that suggest that Hispanics have better outcomes when treatments are adapted to their unique experiences, and risk and protective factors. Family-based treatments for culturally diverse populations require the integration of advances from both the cultural and family systems domains. Current intervention research has begun to move towards developing and advancing individualized interventions for patients/clients. Adaptive interventions, tailored interventions, adapted interventions, and targeted interventions have all been identified in the literature as appropriate for addressing distinct cultural characteristics which generic interventions may not address effectively. To date, research has focused less on tailored or adaptive interventions partly due to the fact that they require decision rules, more careful implementation, and measurement of individualized outcomes. In this article we present evidence for the usefulness of adaptive interventions that can address not only subgroup variability but within group variability as well. Culturally Informed and Flexible Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents is presented as an adaptive treatment that allows for the tailoring of treatment to the unique clinical and cultural variations of individual adolescents and families, but that does so in a systematic and replicable fashion. By building decision-making processes into the manualized treatment, the transportability of the treatment may be enhanced as family therapists appreciate it's flexibility to address the complexity of clinical work.