Addiction Medicine
Family medicine is a critical setting for preventing, diagnosing, and treating substance use disorders (SUDs), as family medicine physicians are often on the front lines caring for patients with SUDs and their families. Using an equity lens, we seek to use our research to find innovative ways to improve access to high quality care for our most vulnerable patient populations.
Our research comprises a wide range of addiction medicine areas, including improved treatment strategies for opioid and stimulant use disorders, overdose risk reduction, the impact of residential treatment on outcomes for patients with SUDs, pregnancy and lactation care for patients with SUD, and the effect of Medicaid policies on SUD treatment utilization. We also provide addiction medicine training to family medicine residents and addiction medicine fellows.
By utilizing various types of research methods, including both qualitative and quantitative methods, we are able to understand these topics from both generalizable and in-depth perspectives.
Research areas include:
- Using buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder: This work looks at the impact of buprenorphine on treatment outcomes like retention in care, and whether access to high-quality treatment with buprenorphine varies by characteristics like sex, race, and demographics.
- Access to substance use treatment: This group of projects aims to understand factors that influence access to treatment for patients with substance use disorders (SUDs). Specific examples include how policy changes around residential treatment influences residential utilization, and the way that telehealth influences receipt of primary care services for patients with SUDs.
- Stimulant use disorder treatment: This work is centered in our family medicine clinic at Boston Medical Center where we host a program focused on treating stimulant use disorder and the growing need to develop more effective treatment options.
- Telehealth and SUD care: This body of research looks at how telehealth expansion influences the ability of patients with SUDs to access primary care services and whether telehealth helps reduce disparities for patients receiving primary care.
- Addiction training for residents and fellows: Our group is very active in medical education in addiction medicine. Our team obtained two consecutive three-year MassHealth grants to successfully fund four medicine residents on an addiction training specialist track. The curriculum for these trainings were evaluated and are now required for all residents. Our faculty also works with the Grayken Fellowship in Addiction Medicine and delivers focused education to our residents to ensure that trainees develop competency in treating patients with SUDs. Efforts in this area also include evaluation of new educational initiatives around addiction medicine.