The purpose of the Wright OUTT (Opioid Use Treatment Training) Program is to provide training and resources to residents and graduate-level students in medical and PA programs in Montgomery County, Ohio at Wright State University (WSU), the University of Dayton (UD), and Kettering College (KC), equipping them with the theoretical knowledge and practical training required to treat opioid use disorder (OUD) and other substance use disorders (SUDs). This will include training to prescribe medications, including medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD), for treatment in office-based settings upon graduation and receipt of licensure.
For the past seven years, Montgomery County continues to have the highest mortality rates in the state of Ohio due to drug overdoses. Since 2014, the overdose death rate has more than doubled in the county. Additionally, according to the latest SAMHSA-published National Surveys on Drug Use and Health data, Montgomery County has the highest percentage of individuals in the state of Ohio "needing but not receiving treatment for illicit drug use in the past year". A recent study examined the distribution of physicians who could prescribe buprenorphine across the entire United States and reported that only 3.0% of primary care physicians, the largest group of physicians in rural America, had received waivers. Most US counties, including rural counties contiguous to Montgomery County (OH), had no physicians who had obtained waivers to prescribe buprenorphine, resulting in more than 30 million persons who were living in counties without access to buprenorphine treatment. Our proposed Wright OUTT project will address these disparities and barriers.
Wright OUTT seeks to create an addiction education program that will include our current, ongoing DATA waiver training that occurs in the 4th-Year curriculum at WSU's Boonshoft School of Medicine (BSOM), the first year in several WSU residency programs, and in final years of the PA programs at UD and KC. The goals of the project are to create an advisory board that will develop curricula for the collaborating training programs and ultimately provide the region with more practitioners with the skills to effectively treat SUDs. This will include MOUD services for persons with OUD in the southwest Ohio region, the geographic section of Ohio with the highest rates of alcohol/drug misuse and drug overdose deaths. This will be accomplished by providing SUD education and training (including ongoing DATA waiver training) to BSOM medical students and residents in Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, Obstetrics/Gynecology, and Emergency Medicine, and PA students at KC and UD. Measurable objectives of Wright OUTT include: number and type of training events provided; number of students and any other providers participating in each event; number of students who complete didactic training; number of students who participate in clinical observation/practicum opportunities; percentage of students satisfied with didactic training; and percentage of students satisfied with the clinical observation/practicum opportunities. During year 1, DATA waiver training will be continued while the SUD Core Curriculum is being developed. In year 2, the Core Curriculum will be implemented for all students at their respective institutions. During year three, the Core Curriculum will be incorporated into the incoming first year student's coursework. The project is designed to train 250 participants in year 1, 1,070 participants in year 2, and 290 participants in year three, for a total of 1,610 health professions trainees prepared to obtain their DATA waivers upon graduation. In addition to these 1,610 participants, individuals from Wright Patterson Air Force Base and other community providers will be invited to participate in training, potentially increasing the impact of Wright OUTT.