Updates

This animated video explains what nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is and how it can help young people to quit vaping. It provides a general understanding of how NRT works and what the process looks like.

This article highlights our use of the Community-Based Participatory Research model, which centers on forming meaningful relationships with rural communities through broad engagement, mutual learning, and shared decision-making. Working together, we are developing capacity for sustainable trauma-informed interventions that the community needs, wants, and can sustain with the community guiding implementation every step of the way.

In collaboration with schools, community members, and tobacco and substance use disorder treatment specialists in rural areas, we are developing educational programs and resources to address e-cigarette use (also called vaping) among adolescents. The program focuses on supporting teens in quitting e-cigarettes and supporting health care providers through a credit-bearing educational program.

There is not a “one size fits all” approach to treatment for opioid use disorder. By reducing stigma related to methadone, this project aims to make all Food and Drug Administration-approved medications for opioid use disorder available in communities.

For the Growing Resilience initiative, we are partnering with rural communities to develop trauma-informed approaches to support SUD prevention for rural youth. Learning from schools, health care providers, social service agencies, and others working with young people, we are collaborating on relevant evidence-based interventions to address the impact of trauma and reduce the risk of developing SUD.

Beth has been in recovery for 31 years. She says, "It doesn't happen in one day. It takes a long time to gain the fortitude, to get healthy, to be grateful, to be clean and sober."

Nicholas Nacca, MD, cares for patients in the ED and also has a background in addiction medicine. When working with patients with SUD, he tries to learn more about their experiences, and he encourages other providers to have these discussions.

Gary has been in recovery for 22 years. He has many nieces and nephews and loves being “Uncle Gary.” “I love my life,” he says.

Now in recovery from SUD, Chris says, “My life has become so much more than I ever expected it would be. I have a sense of purpose. I have beautiful relationships in my life.”

Charles has been in recovery for 38 years and helps individuals with SUD as an addiction therapist. “Recovery is my work, it’s my ministry,” he says. “Recovery actually works, but you have to work at it.”  

Javier cares for his children and works at an HVAC company. An ED doctor helped him connect with an outpatient program and start his recovery. He had “been stigmatized before,” he says, but he did call the program “because it really showed me that somebody cared.”

Dr. Malcho, an emergency physician certified in addiction medicine, expresses the opportunity to make a difference. “You have the ability to be there at a critical moment to change [a patient’s] life,” she says. “And if you meet them where they are, you can do that.”