With funding from the U.S. State Department, the Thai governmental office for substance abuse prevention, the Thai National Control Board, has selected the Strengthening Families Program for dissemination in Thailand. Their first step was to form a collaboration with a research team headed by Dr. Methinin Pinyuchon from Taskin University in Songkla, Thailand who researched likely effective programs. Because of the Thai emphasis on families and fact that the Cochrane Collaboration Reviews and NIDA say SFP is a very effective program, she selected the 14-session version of SFP for high-risk families. For a year, Dr. Pinyuchon and team worked on the cultural adaptations following a rigorous cultural adaptation protocol just published in Evaluations and the Health Professions (Kumpfer, Pinyuchon, de Melo, & Whiteside, 2008). In Spring 2007, Dr. Kumpfer and Dr. Whiteside trained over 80 prevention specialists from all over Thailand to become certified SFP group leaders. Several SFP groups have been completed with good results. The Thai training team are now conducting their own trainings in the Strengthening Tai Families Program as shown in the attached picture. The long term goal of this Southeast Asian project is to eventually culturally adapt SFP for Laos. Vietnam and other Golden Triangle and Asian countries.
