Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
In recent years Tennessee treatment admission for opioids have surpassed even those for alcohol and 1,631 Tennesseans died of overdose in 2016 a rise from 2015, making finding innovative solutions to the opioid crisis a top priority for the state. We intend to use this funding to develop an opioid specific approach to Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) built upon our robust foundation of SBIRT for alcohol and other drugs. We will build on our previous success with the SBIRT implementation grant as well as our partner institution, Meharry Medical College's, SBIRT training grant to expand screening and enhance our referral to treatment efforts. This project will be a complement to the TN Together initiative to address the burgeoning opioid crisis in our state, and resultantly the receipt of this award will have an exponential effect on our state's ability to address substance use disorder (SUD) and OUD specifically. Through our previous SBIRT implementation grant we were able to screen thousands of Tennesseans, and provide brief intervention and referral to treatment to hundreds respectively, and these efforts have been sustained in our partner institutions. Meharry Medical College has also trained over 2,000 practicing physicians, medical residents and students in SBIRT and continues to provide this service as standard care in all of the family medicine clinics, we will combine this implementation and training experience to effectively combat substance use disorder on a wide scale while also tailoring the intervention to OUD. We will partner with both Eastern Tennessee State University, another previous partner that continues to utilize SBIRT as standard care, Meharry Medical College, and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center's Center for Addiction Science to adapt a statewide opioid focused approach to SBIRT. Our approach utilizes the frame work of SBIRT and adds the innovations that have been so effective in Rhode Island through the AnchorED intervention and the Yale ED Health study. We will use five primary strategies to adapt SBIRT to our current opioid crisis: (1) add universal opioid screening to extant protocols in primary care clinics, continuing to provide brief advice and intervention in clinic; and (2) partner with emergency departments and emergency medical services to identify non-fatal overdoses, in essence a second form of screening; and (3) utilize Advanced Peer Recovery Specialist (APRS) to provide brief negation interviews with these patients and provide either brief treatment using a form of cognitive therapy known as Seeking Safety in combination with MAT; or (4) utilize the APRS to shepherd the patients in need of treatment referral to one of our partner providers that offer behavioral as well as buprenorphine, naltrexone, and/or methadone treatments; and (5) utilize an ECHO training model to rapidly disseminate this approach across the state multiplying the effect of this funding.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
