Albert Einstein and Monte College of Medicine

December 16, 2021— (BRONX, NY) –Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Health System received a three-year grant of $ 447,000 to expand their addiction medicine education and training programs for medical students and residents. The grant, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), will fund a new program focused on diagnosis and care for people with opioid use disorder (OUD), including counseling on drugs for the treatment of drug addiction (MAT), in particular buprenorphine.

Watch the video of Dr Tiffany Lu discussing the new drug addiction medicine program for medical students and residents

“Our Bronx neighborhoods suffer from disproportionately high rates of overdose and overdose deaths,” said Tiffany Lu, MD, MS, assistant professor of medicine at Einstein and director of the Montefiore Buprenorphine Treatment Network. “Many of these deaths are preventable, but access to drugs, especially buprenorphine, has not kept pace with needs. This grant allows us to leverage our in-depth academic and clinical expertise to weave a strong thread of addiction medicine training throughout our facilities.–from the medical school to the residence. We will share our program with other medical schools and health systems in the United States and around the world, so more physicians will be able to provide life-saving care for people with OCD and other disorders related to OCD. use of substances.

Train the next generation of physicians
Medical providers who treat people using MAT should be granted a waiver to prescribe buprenorphine. “Although medical students are not yet licensed to prescribe drugs,” said Dr Lu, “this new foundational training will help them understand how these drugs work and enable them to advocate for treatments for the disease. drug addiction when caring for patients during their clinical placements and future residences. . “

In addition to MAT training, the new medical school curriculum will offer instruction and case discussions on real life scenarios involving people with TOU. The case-based learning approach will cover topics such as reducing stigma while caring for people with OCD, counseling patients on treatment options and applying risk reduction strategies and of overdose prevention. During their clinical practicum, students will visit Montefiore’s network of five opioid treatment programs to learn more about structured medical and psychosocial care for TOU. Students will also be able to take a newly expanded addiction medicine elective course that includes hands-on learning about the inpatient addiction medicine consultation service and weekly addiction medicine clinical case lectures.

Early training of practicing physicians
Under the new grant, internal medicine residents at Montefiore will be required to complete a new two-week rotation that includes work on the addiction medicine consultation service for inpatients, outpatient drug treatment programs and an addiction clinic integrated into a community health center. . MAT training will also be required for residents in internal medicine during the internship, and for residents in psychiatry and behavioral sciences and in family and social medicine during their training.

“We need better training in addiction medicine at all levels,” Dr Lu said. “Most interns and even primary care physicians are uncomfortable dealing with addiction because they don’t ‘have never been officially taught about it in medical school in the same way that diseases like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease have. This grant will train hundreds of students and residents to diagnose, treat and care for people with substance use disorders, improving medical care locally and nationally. I am delighted to collaborate with the Einstein course directors and to work with my colleagues in addiction medicine, including Drs. Melissa Stein, Laila Khalid and Kristine Torres-Lockhart, to implement this program.

The grant, titled “Development and Implementation of a Longitudinal Curriculum in Addiction Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine,” was awarded by SAMHSA, which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Rights. Social Services (H79TI084130).

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About the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine is one of the country’s leading centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. In the 2020-21 academic year, Einstein welcomes 732 medical students, 190 doctoral students. students, 120 students in the combined MD / Ph.D program. program and approximately 250 postdoctoral fellows. The College of Medicine has over 1,900 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its affiliated clinics. In 2020, Einstein received more than $ 185 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health. This includes funding for Einstein’s leading research centers in cancer, aging, intellectual developmental disorders, diabetes, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is focusing its efforts include research in brain development, neuroscience, heart disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial disparities in health. Its partnership with Montefiore, the University Hospital and Einstein University Medical Center, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the rate at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. For more information, visit einsteinmed.org, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, Like us on facebook, and watch us on YouTube.

About the Montefiore health system
Montefiore Health System is one of New York’s premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality, personalized and accountable care to approximately three million people in the communities of the Bronx, Westchester and the Hudson Valley. It includes 10 hospitals, including Montefiore Children’s Hospital, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and more than 200 outpatient outpatient care sites. Advanced clinical and translational research from its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in Cancer, Cardiology and Vascular Care, Pediatrics and Transplantation, to its preeminent school health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated and comprehensive care to patients and their families. For more information, please visit www.montefiore.org. follow us on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn, or check us out on Facebook and YouTube.

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