Addiction Medicine Fellowship - The state of West Virginia has the highest opioid-related overdose mortality rate in the nation with 80.9 deaths per 100,000 people in 2022 (CDC Drug Overdose Death). West Virginia has consistently led the nation in the rate of overdose deaths throughout the duration of our nation’s opioid epidemic. We have the highest need for treatment in one of the most underserved states in this country. There is clearly a great need for addiction treatment in this state and a great interest from trainees for addiction fellowship training. Given this dire need for treatment for an underserved population, the West Virginia University Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry is seeking this HRSA grant to support and expand our current ACGME accredited Addiction Medicine and Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship. These fellowships were created in 2018 and expanded in 2020 with the clinical priority of training Addiction Medicine/Psychiatry fellows yearly interested in working in underserved, community-based settings (which represent majority of West Virginia). HRSA funded stipends will help provide further incentive to trainees who are weighing this additional addiction training versus entering practice. Our fellowship offers a wide range of experiences including in an academic teaching hospital, community health, telemedicine, and specialized population settings. Rotations for fellows will include addiction consult and liaison, inpatient dual diagnosis, inpatient detox, residential, intensive outpatient, adolescent prevention, maternal-OUD clinic, and a novel inpatient long-term antibiotic infusion unit designed to treat the medical sequela from parenteral substance use. This HRSA grant will enable us to branch out more into community health centers with the goal of placing our trainees as staff following program completion. A new addition to our program that will occur during this grant cycle will be the creation of an optional Eastern Campus track that will enable fellows to primarily work in Martinsburg, West Virginia. We are adding this option as we have received significant interest in Addiction Medicine from nearby Family Medicine residents who have stated they would prefer to stay in that area. Additionally, a new ACGME accredited Internal Medicine residency in Martinsburg is slated to begin later in 2025 which may also become a recruitment source for fellows. All Eastern Campus residencies/fellowships are administered by the central Graduate Medical Education (GME) office in Morgantown and will not need additional accreditations. This new track will give fellows more options in where they choose to work, make it easier to recruit qualified and enthusiastic fellows, and increase the likelihood they stay in West Virginia upon completion of the fellowship. Our objective is that at least 50% of the graduating fellows find employment in community settings throughout West Virginia, the progress of which will be tracked for at least 5 years. During the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, three out of six of our new graduates established their practices in medically underserved communities. We further plan to make this track self-sustainable by the end of the 5-year funding period through continued cooperation with all our community partners. There is great clinical need in our underserved communities that will be addressed by further refining this program. HRSA funding via this grant will enable us to continue combating substance use. Given our current program’s qualifications, we are eligible for funding Priority 3 (Rural, Tribal or Underserved Communities) and funding preference under Qualification 1 (High MUC Placement Rate).
