Addiction Medicine Fellowship - The Mid-South is at the center of a public health emergency - a rapidly escalating substance use and overdose crisis that is devastating communities across Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Fueled by the widespread availability of fentanyl and methamphetamine, as well as high rates of opioid prescribing and untreated substance use disorder (SUD), the crisis is straining healthcare systems, overwhelming emergency departments, and exposing severe gaps in addiction treatment resources. While the crisis is most visible in urban centers like Memphis, in Shelby County, TN, where overdose deaths have surged 324% in the past decade, its reach extends deep into rural communities like Union County, MS, where access to addiction-trained physicians is virtually nonexistent. These two counties illustrate the dual burden of addiction in the Mid-South—one marked by high overdose rates in urban areas and a lack of treatment access in rural areas. In response to this crisis, Baptist Memorial Health Care is expanding its Addiction Medicine Fellowship—a program designed to train board-certified addiction medicine physicians to serve the region’s most vulnerable populations. The program builds on Baptist’s existing addiction medicine fellowship, which has already graduated 19 specialists over the past 4.5 years, yet the demand for trained providers far exceeds the available workforce. This HRSA-funded expansion will: • Train addiction medicine fellows through hands-on, in-person clinical rotations at two key locations: o Shelby County, TN (Memphis): A large metropolitan area, where fellows will gain experience in hospital-based addiction consult services, outpatient clinics, and community health settings. o Union County, MS (New Albany): A rural training site, exposing fellows to the challenges of addiction care in medically underserved areas. • Expand access to addiction medicine expertise across the Mid-South by training fellows through a telehealth addiction consult service, supporting 16 Baptist hospitals across Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. These hospitals include locations in Tipton, Carroll, and Obion counties in TN; Crittenden County in AR, and Lafayette, Prentiss, and Calhoun counties in MS; ensuring that even hospitals without addiction specialists can receive expert guidance. • Strengthen the addiction medicine workforce by integrating fellows into Baptist’s broader network of hospitals and outpatient clinics, ensuring that expertise is embedded in both urban and rural healthcare systems. The Baptist Addiction Medicine Fellowship is more than a training program—it is a workforce development initiative designed to transform addiction care across the Mid-South. The counties impacted by this grant include Prentiss, Tipton, Obion, Craighead, Benton, Poinsett, Calhoun, Carroll, Fayette, Panola, Lafayette, Union, Shelby, Weakley, and DeSoto, representing a combined population of 1.6 million people (PolicyMap, 2020). This population includes both urban and rural underserved communities, where addiction treatment resources are scarce, and patients often face significant barriers to accessing evidence-based care, further exacerbating health inequities. Our project meets both Funding Priority 3, Rural, Tribal or Underserved Communities, and Funding Preference 1, Medically Underserved Community. We have attached documentation for this request.
