During the June 2021 Annual Meeting’s Fellows Lightning Round session, Marc Kimball, MD presented “Naloxone Co-Prescribing Across a Large Health System.” Dr. Kimball is a 2021 graduate of the addiction medicine fellowship program jointly run by Maine Medical Center and the US Veterans Affairs Health System.

Dr. Kimball’s presentation looked at the co-prescribing of naloxone across MaineHealth’s different sites and found that only about 6% of eligible patients had naloxone on their medication list. Using this information, the Naloxone Committee developed initiatives to help increase the number of patients being co-prescribed naloxone. Some of these initiatives included providing on-site naloxone training, developing online educational modules, and implementing a Best Practice Advisory (BPA).

The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) will be hosting the 2022 Addiction Medicine Advocacy Conference on March 7-8, 2022. This is a two-day virtual advocacy event. On the first day, attendees will receive training from expert advocacy professionals on issues important to the practice of addiction medicine and hear from key policymakers. Then, attendees will participate in carefully planned virtual Capitol Hill meetings to advance an ambitious policy agenda designed to support addiction treatment professionals as they treat patients and save lives.

ACAAM is honored to be a national advocacy partner for this Conference – along with the American College of Medical Toxicology, and the American Osteopathic Academy of Addiction Medicine. We look forward to advancing addiction medicine together!

ACAAM has an opportunity for members to share their interest in joining the organization’s Anti-Racism/Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee for 2022.

This opportunity will allow you to work with several accomplished and returning committee members to develop, implement, integrate, and support strategies and activities to achieve priority goals related to anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion and to create an equitable and welcoming environment within ACAAM.

At its December meeting, ACAAM’s Board of Directors approved a slate of new officers for the organization, who officially take office on January 1, 2022, and serve in the roles through December 31, 2023.

The new officers include:

At its December 2021 meeting, the ACAAM Board of Directors honored outgoing Board members who have spent significant time and provided tremendous effort to ensure the organization has been successful over the last decade plus.

These Board members were devoted stewards of both the American Board of Addiction Medicine and the several iterations of the organization that is today known as ACAAM. Their dedication and wisdom will be missed, but will not be lost, as they will be regularly called upon for advice and involvement.

Even as the recruitment season for the 2022 academic year continues, Addiction Medicine fellowships are beginning to look toward the next application cycle. Two closely related themes top the agenda: getting the word out to potential candidates and improving the process for applicants and fellowships alike.

At the latest ACAAM Virtual Town Hall on November 18, program directors, faculty, and coordinators gathered to begin discussing next steps. The meeting came exactly one month after the offer period for 2022 positions opened for most fellowships participating in the Common Decision Date. The Common Date plan provided a 3-month window of “protected time” so applicants could fully explore their options and programs could complete interviews before offers started.

During the June 2021 Annual Meeting’s Fellows Lightning Round session, Shawn Cohen, MD, presented “Simplifying Buprenorphine Microinduction in the Outpatient Setting.” Dr. Cohen is a second-year fellow in the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine.

Dr. Cohen’s presentation defined microinduction, described how his team explains it to partners and patients, and provided a few resources that may be used to aid its explanation. These resources include a Tweetorial that can be found in the presentation slides.

In early November, ACAAM launched a brand-new member benefit—an online Career Center where employers can recruit qualified candidates and job seekers can find their next addiction medicine job opportunity!

For Employers
We encourage you to take advantage of this new member benefit and post your open positions on the ACAAM Career Center. If you are an ACAAM member, a posting for up to 90 days is only $100 (nonmembers pay $450). And for additional visibility, you can upgrade your posting to a featured listing for only $150 extra.

ACAAM recently had the pleasure of interviewing Sheila Specker, MD, one of the longest-tenured addiction medicine program directors in the country.

Dr. Specker is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota where she practices as an addiction psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. She is also the director of the University of Minnesota’s Addiction Medicine Fellowship, which trains physicians of all specialties in addiction and co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Dr. Specker chaired the committee that wrote the program requirements in 2016–2017 that were ultimately adopted by ACGME.

When patients are treated appropriately by medical professionals trained in addiction medicine, we can save lives and improve treatment outcomes. With that goal in mind, National Addiction Treatment Week has been created to raise awareness about the critical gap between the number of patients who need addiction treatment and their access to qualified medical professionals trained to provide evidence-based, specialty treatment. It also highlights the urgent need for clinicians to enter the field of addiction medicine and expand the qualified workforce. We hope you will join the week and our efforts to close the treatment gap and save lives.

This year’s theme is focused on inspiring the next generation.

This year, Addiction Treatment Week will focus on encouraging the next generation of clinicians and providers to learn more about addiction, evidence-based treatment, and career paths in the field of addiction medicine. Physicians who are board-certified in addiction medicine and clinicians who treat addiction daily will share why they chose to treat addiction and inspire medical students, residents, and fellows to join them in learning more about evidence-based addiction treatment.

The first ACAAM Virtual Addiction Medicine Training Recruitment Fair was held September 14, with residents from around the country meeting addiction medicine fellowships and learning about the specialty from a panel of program directors.

Thirty-nine addiction medicine fellowships participated in the event, which featured virtual breakout “tables” where interested residents could visit with fellowships one-on-one.

During the 2021 ACAAM Annual Meeting, the organization’s Anti-Racism/Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee presented a session titled "Moving Beyond Kneeling: Promoting an Anti-Racist and Racial Justice Framework within Academic Addiction Medicine Fellowships."

During the session, the committee discussed the prevalence of microaggressions, and provided three tools that can be used to help combat them as they occur. These examples were related to specific scenarios discussed during the session, whose Powerpoint slides can be downloaded here for context.

During the June 2021 Annual Meeting’s Fellows Lightning Round session, Bhavna Bali, MD, a 2021 graduate of the Interdisciplinary Addiction Medicine Fellowship at Penn State College of Medicine, shared her research titled Outpatient Buprenorphine Microinduction for Pain “A Safe Method to Transition High-Risk Patients.”

After reviewing the basics of microdosing buprenorphine, Dr. Bali’s presentation focused on a specific case where a high-risk patient on high-dose opioids was transitioned to suboxone for pain management. The patient in question had been diagnosed with Physiological Opioid Dependence with a high risk of developing Opioid Use Disorder.