Addiction Medicine Fellowship - The primary purpose of this project is to expand the two Mass General Brigham (MGB) Addiction Medicine Fellowships (AMFs) at Mass General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the MGB Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship (APF), to grow the number of physicians caring for patients with substance use disorders (SUDs), particularly people in rural and other community-based settings. We will do this by funding 5 fellowship slots across our main teaching hospitals: MGH and BWH, our major academic medical centers and their affiliated community-based programs, and McLean Hospital, the main MGB psychiatric teaching hospital. To increase exposure to care in rural and other community-based settings, we will start a new rural health rotation and a mobile addiction Bridge Clinic rotation. In these rotations, fellows will learn to provide specialized SUD care in interdisciplinary, integrated teams in rural and community-based settings. Another major aim of our project is to increase SUD knowledge among medical and psychiatric residents, and to increase interest in addiction as a specialty. We will achieve this by creating a “fellow as teacher” program, in which fellows will receive mentored support in developing and delivering core SUD topic lectures to medicine and psychiatry residents. We have benefited greatly from our receipt of a HRSA grant in 2020 (as Partners HealthCare, which changed its name to MGB); that grant enabled us to fund 2-3 MGH AMF fellows and 2 MGB APF fellows per year. We have been fortunate across our programs to be competitive and we have filled our slots each year with excellent candidates. In our proposed expansion, we will add one fellow at the BWH AMF in addition to the two fellows each in the MGH AMF and MGB APF fellowships; we will continue to train fellows in holistic, team-based, interprofessional SUD care. With this funding opportunity, we will aim to expand the addiction workforce, train fellows in innovative, interdisciplinary care models in rural and other community-based settings, educate residents about SUDs, and draw more applicants to addiction fellowships, thus benefitting the patients, families, and communities we serve. Specific measurable objectives that the project will accomplish • Increase the number of board-certified addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry sub-specialists, with a focus on those who are committed to working in rural or other community-based settings. • Develop new rural health and mobile addiction treatment rotations. • Develop a “fellow as teacher” program for the AMF and APF fellows to deliver educational content to teach medicine and psychiatry residents at Mass General Brigham about SUD prevention, treatment, and recovery services. Clinical priorities that will be addressed by the project: The project will address SUD and SUD that co-occurs with mental health disorders and other medical conditions. Our additional focus is patients with SUD in rural or other community-based settings. How the proposed project for which funding is requested will be accomplished We will carry out the following: Objective 1) Recruit fellows who are interested in serving in rural and other community-based settings. Accept 5 HRSA-funded fellows annually (two MGH AMF, two MGB APF, one BWH AMF). Offer career guidance from program entry, during the fellowship, and for 5 years after graduation. Objective 2) Expand community rotations by adding rural health and mobile Bridge Clinic addiction care rotations. Objective 3) Formalize a “fellow as teacher” program for AMF and APF fellows to teach medicine and psychiatry residents; fellows will join a monthly faculty MGB educational committee and will be mentored in developing didactics on core SUD topics to be delivered during resident teaching sessions along with in-the-moment case-based teaching on rotations. Statement indicating eligibility for funding priority and funding preference Our funding priority is team-based.
