MENTAL HEALTH
to medication-assisted treatment using the three Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) approved medications for the treatment of
opioid use disorder, reducing unmet treatment need, and reducing
opioid overdose related deaths through the provision of prevention,
treatment and recovery activities for opioid use disorder.” Louisville
has received special designation as a community with an excess of
mortality related to overdose deaths that merit additional federal
support, and many programs and organizations have begun to
receive funding from SAMHSA beginning in 2017.
In 2007, the UofL School of Medicine Department of Psychia-
try began one of the first in Louisville office based opioid agonist
treatment (OBOT) programs. The program has been staffed by
faculty, addiction psychiatry residents, general psychiatry residents,
and medical students, providing buprenorphine, naltrexone, and
other medications as part of a comprehensive medication assisted
treatment (MAT) program to opioid addicted patients, includ-
ing pregnant women. UofL continues to have the only addiction
psychiatry residency training program in Kentucky, which has
historically involved the clinic as part of the training experience.
The addiction and general psychiatry residents and students who
have participated in this clinic have observed it to be helpful and
positive to the patients being treated and have been more likely to
participate in providing MAT when they graduate from the program.
Having this experience has benefited the community in training
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the next generation of physicians who will treat the next phase
of this epidemic. The program has been limited in the number of
patients enrolled by the availability of trained providers combined
with the quota limits for physicians in the past but, with the new
SAMHSA initiative for 2018, we hope to expand these addiction
treatment services.
Various programs in the Louisville community outside of the
University received funding from SAMHSA from the previous
round in 2017, and this year the UofL School of Medicine will
be included as a recipient. The University will be directed to use
SAMHSA funding to substantially increase access to addiction
treatment services for patients at UofL Hospital, to increase access
to OBOT and MAT in the outpatient setting, and to partner with
other community SAMHSA initiative recipients. This funding will
help the education and training of faculty, staff, medical students
and resident physicians; all will be needed in order to meet the
demand created by the continued epidemic.
Dr. Stewart practices addiction psychiatry at UofL Hospital.
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DECEMBER 2018
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