A Resource for Healthcare and Social Services Professionals
Colleen LaBelle was presented the 2017 Betty Ford Award from the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA) at the organization’s annual conference held November 2-4.
Continue reading “OBAT Director Colleen LaBelle receives 2017 Betty Ford Award”
The 2017 MetaECHO Conference in Albuquerque, NM brings together health policy experts, government officials, academic leaders, funders, and Project ECHO replication partners from across the globe. All conference goers share the collective goal of touching one billion lives by 2025. The four-day conference embraces the infinite possibilities of the global ECHO movement across healthcare and beyond.
Danna Gobel, LCSW, Clinic Coordinator and Co-Facilitator of the Boston Medical Center Opioid Addiction Treatment Hub for primary care teams attended the conference September 13-16, 2017. Danna and team submitted an abstract which was accepted as a poster presentation titled, “Challenges identified by primary care teams implementing addiction treatment into office based settings: Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) Opioid Addiction Treatment ECHO” and which won the Judge’s Award for Research at the MetaECHO 2017 Poster Session.
Danna and team performed a quality improvement project that utilized thematic analysis to identify patterns in challenges faced by primary care teams implementing addiction treatment programs as indicated on the first 30 case presentation forms completed by the BMC Opioid ECHO participants (Spokes). Challenges identified were categorized into 4 main groups:
Future research should look at themes in a larger, more diverse sample to help inform future ECHO projects and ensure that Hub curricula remains topical and relevant.
Congratulations Danna and team!
International Overdose Awareness Day (IOAD) is a global event held annually on August 31st of each year. The event draws worldwide attention to the need to prevent and create awareness about drug overdose.
Together, communities, families, people who use drugs, government officials, international organizations, businesses and policy makers come together in a shared effort to reduce the tragedy of overdose.
The goals of Overdose Day are:
Free campaign materials and other resources developed by the Penington Institute in Australia are available for public use and can be downloaded from their website: overdoseday.com.
As in years past, BMC’s OBAT Team in collaboration with our new Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine will be participating in this powerful campaign. We encourage all of you to also observe Overdose Day on August 31st and post any planned events to the Overdose Day events calendar.
August 13 – 19 is National Health Center Week, celebrating the work done by health centers in communities across the country.
Visit https://healthcenterweek.org to read more, and be sure to visit the NHCW Events page to see some of the great upcoming events planned by community health centers here in Massachusetts.
The Global Academy from Harvard Medical School has launched the online Opioid Use Disorder Education Program, featuring expert instructors Colleen LaBelle and Kristin Wason from OBAT TTA. The free, self-paced program offers a total of 24 hours of education for healthcare professionals so that they can better understand, identify, and treat opioid use disorder (OUD).
Learn more about the program and sign up for the free web-based courses here.
Scott Hadland, MD, physician at Boston Medical Center, discusses the findings of his just-published study showing that only a minority of 13- to 25-year-olds with an opioid use disorder are prescribed a medication to treat their addiction. “If you have a child struggling with opioid addiction,” he says, “understand that there are medications that support and sustain recovery.”
Read the AP article here, and see the full study in JAMA Pediatrics.
Despite its proven effectiveness, not enough doctors are prescribing buprenorphine for opioid addiction, and not enough patients can access this treatment option. Karsten Lunze, MD, of Boston University, and Alicia Ventura of Boston Medical Center OBAT talk about why in this article from Tonic.
CATALYST Program Director and Project ECHO Hub expert Sarah Bagley, MD, talks to the Boston Globe about treating adolescents and young adults with substance use disorders at Boston Medical Center’s CATALYST youth clinic. “Our clinic offers wrap-around care that includes treating the issues that go beyond addiction,” she says. Read the full story here.
Grayken Center for Addiction TTA is a program of Boston Medical Center (BMC), a 514-bed academic medical center located in Boston's historic South End and the largest safety-net hospital in New England.
The content on this site and the content presented by Grayken Center for Addiction TTA is intended solely to inform and educate healthcare and social service professionals, and shall not be used for medical advice and is not a substitute for the advice or treatment of a qualified medical professional. The hospital, the program, and the contributors are not acting as health care providers or professional consultants on behalf of any specific patient and disclaim establishing a provider-patient relationship with any specific patient.