Addiction Medicine Fellowship - The Alameda Health System Addiction Medicine Fellowship program expansion is designed to address the urgent need for addiction specialists, with the aim to place physicians in areas where addiction treatment demand exceeds treatment capacity. This fellowship is located in a community-based setting and began during the 2024-2025 academic year with its first two fellows. We aim to expand the program with two additional fellows through this funding opportunity. The core clinical experiences for fellows will be at the Highland Hospital Bridge Clinic and through the Alameda Health System Addiction Medicine Consult Service. The Bridge Clinic uses a low-threshold model of care that provides urgent and same-day access to addiction treatment services in-person or through telemedicine and does not place any barriers to care; in addition, patients engage in long-term longitudinal care at the Bridge Clinic with full integration of primary care and mental health services. The Bridge Clinic is high-volume and has a recovery-focused intensive outpatient program with a multidisciplinary behavioral health clinical team. The Addiction Medicine Consult Service is the most consulted specialty in the health system, covering three acute medical hospitals, a psychiatric hospital and skilled nursing facility. The program is based on a multidisciplinary approach that leverages team-based care to provide the highest quality addiction medicine services. The fellowship has key local community partners, including an Opioid Treatment Program, a Medical Respite, and the Juvenile Justice Center. These rotations provide an immersive experience integrating social and legal barriers to care and partnering with community-based organizations and medicolegal partnerships that address patients’ social determinants of health. Fellows will also work with the Indian Health Service in Whiteriver, Arizona, providing a unique opportunity to practice addiction medicine in a rural environment. With this foundational clinical experience, fellows will be prepared to practice Addiction Medicine in a variety of settings, with a focus on placements in areas where specialty substance use treatment is most needed. The Addiction Medicine Fellowship is integrated with existing graduate medical education programs at Alameda Health System. Resident physicians from internal medicine, emergency medicine, family medicine and psychiatry all rotate with the Division of Addiction Medicine and have supervision from Addiction Medicine fellows. Fellows will each supervise at least 10 unique residents throughout the course of their fellowship. In addition to clinical supervision, Addiction Medicine Fellows will also provide didactic teaching for residents and medical students through the existing graduate medical education infrastructure at Alameda Health System, emphasizing the chronic disease model of substance use disorder treatment. The Division of Addiction Medicine at Alameda Health System has nationally recognized faculty in the specialty of Addiction Medicine. The faculty group are leaders in advancing Addiction Medicine by focusing on research, quality, and education which are fully integrated into the fellowship. This experience places fellows on the front lines of the opioid epidemic in a way that is responsive to the dynamic synthetic drug crisis and allows a firsthand view of the evaluation and implementation of novel treatments for substance use disorders. The Addiction Medicine Fellowship also utilizes structured evaluation and quality improvement processes to assess fellow and resident needs, track patient outcomes, and measure program effectiveness. The program’s strategic partnerships and interdisciplinary approach, paired with a rigorous evaluation program, provide a replicable model for expanding addiction medicine services and preparing physicians to meet the complex needs of patient populations in a variety of settings.
