The Expansion of Practitioner Education @ Loyola University Chicago (PracEd@LUC) - The Expansion of Practitioner Education @ Loyola University Chicago (PracEd@LUC) takes a major step toward expanding and improving the education and training needed by social workers at all levels to provide effective treatment for individuals with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). Moreover, because of its interprofessional approach, PracEd@LUC will prepare social workers to provide services across a variety of settings in collaboration with a broad range of other providers, ensuring that access to effective treatment grows by the end of the funding period in April 2022 by creating a curricula that engage providers to address the need for effective SUD treatment.
PracEd@LUC plans to accomplish the following goals: 1) Increase knowledge and skills of SUD among masters-level social work students by integrating SBIRT, assessment, and treatment principles, specifically alcohol, marijuana, stimulants, and opioids curricula; and 2) Evaluate and modify strategies to best engage and train students in SBIRT, assessment, treatment principles and their application particularly with regard to alcohol, marijuana, stimulants, and opioids. It will accomplish these goals through the following objectives: Objective 1.1: In the first 60 days, conduct an inventory to identify foundational courses that could incorporate SBIRT, assessment and treatment content and practices and develop adaptable curricula; Objective 1.2: Expand/refine PracEd@LUC training curriculum to incorporate interprofessional perspectives at two levels of social work education: 1) within the generalist practice curriculum (final year BSW, first year MSW) in Year 1; and 2) through an advanced, interprofessional didactic training in Year 2 for specialty MSW students which would also be available to all schools at LUC and beyond; Objective 1.3: Engage community agencies and field supervisors on SUD through workforce development opportunities; Objective 2.1: Evaluate curriculum effectiveness and modify based on results of evaluation in Year 2; Objective 2.2: Work with NASW IL and ASWB to implement examination questions related to SUD on licensing and certification exams in Year 2; and Objective 2.3: Develop sustainability plan for curriculum inclusion and training of health professions post grant award in Year 2.
The target population is the Masters of Social Work (MSW) program at Loyola University Chicago (LUC SSW). In 2018, there were 562 students enrolled in the MSW program. Of that, 64% were White, 17% were Black, and 14% were LatinX. Although a bilingual program launched in 2018, information is currently not available on how many students speak English as a second language. In addition, demographics regarding sexual orientation is currently not available. The unduplicated number for this project will be the enrollment of the 2020 MSW class, which will be approximately 600 students.
