The Curbsiders Addiction Medicine podcast covers introductory topics in addiction medicine through expert interviews and provides listeners with clinical pearls in caring for patients with substance use disorders. The first season can be found on all major listening platforms, including Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Carolyn Chan, MD, instructor of medicine (general internal medicine), created the podcast during her medical education fellowship at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). Chan had been a producer for the main Curbsiders Internal Medicine podcast and an addiction medicine fellow at YSM when she proposed the idea of the Addiction Medicine spinoff series.
Chan reached out to her YSM colleagues to co-host the series. Kenneth Morford, MD, assistant professor (general internal medicine) and associate program director for the Yale Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program, serves as a co-host. Other co-hosts include Natalie Stahl, MD, MPH, and Shawn Cohen, MD, instructor of medicine (general internal medicine).
Each episode centers around a type of substance use disorder and uses a patient case to guide an interview with an expert. In each episode, the hosts engage with experts and ask for their advice on how to implement addiction medicine treatment into clinical settings. Featured guests from YSM faculty include Stephen Holt, MD; Kimberly Sue, MD, PhD; and Jeanette Tetrault, MD.
The podcast is aimed at generalist clinicians but suitable for any healthcare professional or trainee interested in learning more about addiction medicine. “Our episodes are guided by what people are struggling with in their primary care practices and areas in which they could use additional knowledge,” said Chan.
Season one covers the spectrum of basic topics in addiction medicine. Episode topics include opioid use disorder, stimulant use disorder, alcohol use disorder, smoking cessation, psychosocial interventions, and harm reduction, among others. In addition to educating its audience, the podcast sets out to destigmatize substance use disorders and encourage patient-centered language.
The first episode went live in July 2022. Morford highlights, “The Curbsiders Addiction Medicine Podcast was launched at a critical moment. Most health professional schools do not adequately teach how to treat people with substance use disorders. Recently, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the accrediting body for all graduate medical training programs, added a new requirement of clinical experience with treating substance use for all internal medicine residency programs, so there is a need for this type of educational content.”
The podcast has over 30,000 downloads, and listeners tune in from the U.S. and around the globe, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Ecuador, Panama, and Asia. The team hopes to continue expanding on topics in addiction medicine and are taking requests from listeners for a season two.
The podcast is created in collaboration with Yale Internal Medicine Primary Care residents Zina Huxley-Reicher, MD, and Hannah Daneshvar, MD who are both enrolled in the Collaborative Behavioral Health & Addiction Medicine in Primary Care (CHAMP) Training Program. Kat Mullins, MD, from New York University Grossman School of Medicine, and Era Kryzhanovskaya, MD, from the University of California, San Francisco, contribute to the production of the podcast.
The Curbsiders Addiction Medicine Podcast is hosted by faculty members Chan, Morford, and Cohen in Yale’s Department of Internal Medicine. Stahl, also a co-host, is with the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. The podcast is sponsored by the American College of Academic Addiction Medicine.
Subscribe to the Curbsiders Addiction Medicine podcast on any major listening platform or on their website, and follow them on Twitter and Instagram.