Kenneth Morford, MD, FASAM, and Jeanette Tetrault, MD, FACP, FASAM, have been awarded a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to establish an addiction medicine fellowship program for advanced practice providers, including physician assistants (PAs) and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs).
The five-year grant supports creation of the new fellowship as part of the SUSTAIN (Substance Use Skills Training to Advance INtegrated care) project. SUSTAIN aims to strengthen and build upon interdisciplinary addiction medicine training initiatives offered through the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine, including the established Yale Addiction Medicine Fellowship for physicians and the Collaborative Behavioral Health and Addiction Medicine in Primary Care (CHAMP) training program for Yale health professions students, primary care residents, and faculty.
“SUSTAIN fills an important gap in our current educational efforts by providing specialty-level addiction training to PAs and APRNs who are critical to expanding the addiction workforce. This opportunity comes at a crucial time when we continue to see record numbers of drug overdose deaths. Most people with substance use disorders don't receive treatment and often have negative experiences with the healthcare system. We want to change that. Our goal is to teach and empower health professionals across all training levels to provide compassionate care for people who use substances and to become champions for system-level change,” said Morford.
By providing specialized addiction medicine training to APPs, Morford and Tetrault hope to expand the addiction-trained workforce in general medical settings, where barriers to care for substance use are most often encountered. The program will also provide a learning experience for Yale Addiction Medicine fellows that is uniquely interdisciplinary and team-based.
“Under the leadership of Dr. Morford, the SUSTAIN program will greatly enhance the educational fabric of the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine. We are delighted to partner with so many dedicated programs throughout the health system to offer advanced addiction training to PAs and APRNs, who are primed to address the profound treatment gap seen in this country for patients with substance use disorder. By training advanced practice providers alongside physicians, we have a real opportunity for individuals from diverse training backgrounds to learn with, from, and about each other to improve care for patients who use substances,” said Tetrault.
Yale’s APP Addiction Medicine fellows will train alongside their physician colleagues at a variety of clinical sites spanning outpatient, hospital-based, community, and specialty settings. APP fellows will receive targeted supervision and mentorship from APP preceptors, as well as support and guidance with job placement following completion of the one-year training program.
The newly created fellowship will recruit one advanced practice provider per academic year and is presently recruiting fellows for both the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years. Individuals and institutions interested in learning more about the fellowship and application process are invited to visit the program website.
Morford is an assistant professor of medicine, program director of the CHAMP training program, and associate director of the Yale Addiction Medicine Fellowship. His research focuses on medical education, interprofessional collaboration, and integrating addiction medicine into primary care. Tetrault is professor of medicine, Yale School of Medicine, and of public health, Yale School of Public Health, director of the Yale Addiction Medicine Fellowship, associate director for education and training of the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine, and vice chief for education for the Section of General Internal Medicine.
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