BUSSW Faculty Roll Out Groundbreaking Addiction Training Program

Boston University School of Social Work takes over the most recent issue of Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions with a multi-part special feature on the school’s emerging Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Program (ADEP). ADEP, an initiative started in 2017 to promote better education about addiction, provides training to MSW social work educators on identification and treatment of substance abuse problems. The program is a first step to creating a new generation of social workers who have a more in-depth, complex understanding of addiction, and who will be better equipped to assist affected individuals.

ADEP, which was funded in part by the NIAAA, addresses our nation’s epidemic of drug and alcohol addiction by increasing the scope of knowledge at the faculty level. The hope is that educators with this training will be better able to prepare social work students for clinical careers where they can provide support to individuals struggling with addiction. The SSW faculty behind ADEP emphasize that, while their ongoing training program shows immense potential, their broader goal is to provide social work educators with a template for teaching about addiction that can be applied nationwide.

ADEP’s first training program took place in June of 2017 and brought together 50 full-time, clinical social work faculty members from MSW programs across the country. The immersive training program focused on evidence-based contemporary research about alcohol and drug addiction and brought depth, substance, and complexity to professors’ working knowledge of substance abuse identification and treatment. The program also gave ADEP’s practitioners an opportunity to receive feedback from participants about the obstacles they face in teaching students about alcohol and drug addiction. The consensus among faculty was that the majority of MSW programs only skimmed the surface of substance abuse, which they attributed to densely-packed curriculums and lack of knowledge at a faculty level.

The inaugural training program in 2017 is only the beginning of the research and practice involved in ADEP. The special issue from Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions includes an array of articles addressing nuances of the program and of addiction on a larger scale. “Context Matters: Health Disparities in Substance Use Disorders and Treatments” brings attention to social and racial inequalities in addiction treatment. “Teaching Social Work Students About Alcohol and Other Drug Use Disorder” discusses the efficacy of intensive faculty training in alcohol and other drug identification and treatment, using examples from three schools.

Featured articles include:

• “Integrating Alcohol and Other Drug Content in the Social Work Curriculum: Practices and Perceived Barriers”
• “The Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Program for Social Work Faculty: A Model for Immersion Training”
• “Context Matters: Health Disparities in Substance Use Disorders and Treatment”
• “Learning to Incorporate AOD Content into Social Work Education: An Interview with Miesha T. Marzell, Ph.D”
•  “Advancing Alcohol and Other Drug Education among Social Work Faculty: An Evaluation of Social Work Faculty Immersion Training”
• “Teaching Social Work Students About Alcohol and Other Drug Use Disorders: From Faculty Learning to Pedagogical Innovation”
• “Addressing Alcohol and Other Drug Use Disorders in Context”

Congratulations to all faculty members at Boston University School of Social Work and BU affiliates who contributed to this special issue: Christopher P. Salas-Wright, PhD, MSW; Lena Lundgren, PhD; Maryann Amodeo, PhD, MSW; Taylor Hall, PhD; Daniel Alford, MD, MPH; Linda Sprague Martinez, PhD, MA; Ivy Krull, PhD, MSW, MPH; Angela Wangari Walter, PhD, MPA, MSW; Andrea Acevedo, PhD; Luz Marilis Lopez, PhD, MSW; and Janice Furlong, MSW.