More Oregon professionals seek addiction training
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A growing number of health care providers, law enforcement officials and school staff are seeking out education on substance use disorders and treatment as overdose deaths rise across Oregon.
Why it matters: Oregon Health & Science University's addiction medicine ECHO program aims to fill a gap in how the state responds to its opioid crisis by training professionals in and out of traditional health care settings to offer evidence-based care.
Context: The program, founded in 2017, initially focused on educating primary care physicians — who may not have learned about addiction medicine during their training — on treatments for opioid use disorder, such as buprenorphine and methadone.
What they're saying: "There is certainly still a stigma around addiction in the medical education system," Dan Hoover, the program's director and an assistant professor of medicine at OHSU, told Axios.
- "It's been thought to be just this sort of unusual offshoot of psychiatry, and not something that everyone needs to know how to address and treat in their practice."
State of play: In 2022, the program expanded to new audiences, including school counselors and law enforcement agents, who are witnessing firsthand fentanyl's deadly impact on adolescents and jail populations, both of which have high rates of overdose.
- Plus: In the months since possession of illicit drugs became illegal again in Oregon, more county officials and sheriff's offices in charge of deflection — deferring drug users to treatment in lieu of jail — have enrolled in OHSU's program, per Hoover.
By the numbers: Just over 1,100 professionals participated in the addiction medicine ECHO program in the academic year ending in June 2024 — up 65% compared to the same period the year prior, per OHSU.
Between the lines: The program is free and funded by grants from the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon's Criminal Justice Commission.
How it works: Over the course of 10 to 12 weeks, participants join a weekly Zoom for one hour during their lunch time, Hoover said.
- Curriculum includes information on medication-assisted treatments and the psychosocial aspects of substance abuse, such as dual diagnoses with mental health disorders and increasing access to peer support networks.
- Specialty sessions dive deep into how best to treat addiction in perinatal and prenatal cases, addressing withdrawal symptoms in incarceration settings as well as keeping an eye on new, emerging substances in the state's drug supply, such as xylazine.
- Class size can range between 20 to 100 participants.
The bottom line: "What I want to see happen is that there's no wrong door that a patient with substance use disorder could come into," Hoover said.
- "We're not there yet, but I think our state is definitely seeing improvement."