SMART Designs for Developing Adaptive Interventions - Online Course

In many settings, such as the treatment of mental health or substance use disorders, oncology, schools, and more, there are outstanding scientific questions about how to tailor treatment to an individual’s changing needs. Adaptive interventions (also called dynamic treatment regimens or adaptive treatment strategies) provide guidelines for whether, how, when, or for whom to change the type, dose, or delivery of treatment. Specifically, adaptive interventions are sequences of decision rules that use ongoing patient information to recommend subsequent treatment, whether that treatment be behavioral, educational, pharmacological, or psychosocial. In schools, personnel might iteratively adapt intervention(s) to address the dynamic needs and contexts of students.

Sequential, multiple-assignment, randomized trials (SMARTs) can be used to construct effective adaptive interventions. The key feature of a SMART is that some or all trial participants are randomized multiple times. This sequential randomization allows researchers to address scientific questions at multiple stages of the development of a high-quality adaptive intervention, such as those about how best to initiate an adaptive intervention, how to define subsets of patients who most benefit from certain adaptations, or how best to adapt treatment for those individuals whose first-line intervention was ineffective. SMARTs can be used to build an evidence base for adaptive treatment of disease, strategies for engagement in treatment, or even implementation interventions to improve adoption of evidence-based practices.

Starting August 20, we are offering this seminar as a 4-day synchronous*, livestream workshop held via the free video-conferencing software Zoom. Each day will consist of two lecture sessions which include hands-on exercises, separated by a 1-hour break. You are encouraged to join the lecture live, but will have the opportunity to view the recorded session later in the day if you are unable to attend at the scheduled time.

*We understand that finding time to participate in livestream courses can be difficult. If you prefer, you may take all or part of the course asynchronously. The video recordings will be made available within 24 hours of each session and will be accessible for four weeks after the seminar, meaning that you will get all of the class content and discussions even if you cannot participate synchronously.

Closed captioning is available for all live and recorded sessions. Captions can be translated to a variety of languages including Spanish, Korean, and Italian. For more information, click here.