Yale School of Medicine leaders advance addiction medicine

Addiction has been increasingly recognized as a crisis in Connecticut and across the nation, but it has not always been viewed as a disease requiring evidence-based treatment like other medical specialties. That changed this week when the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) — a national body that maintains the standards for physician certification — announced that it would include addiction medicine as an official subspecialty.

Dr. Patrick O’Connor and Dr. Gail D’Onofrio

Yale School of Medicine leaders Drs. Patrick O’Connor and Gail D’Onofrio were instrumental in bringing about the landmark change. Section chief for general internal medicine, O’Connor served as president of the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM), which sponsored the application to ABMS. D’Onofrio, chair of the emergency medicine department, has served as a founding ABAM board member and secretary.

“This recognition by ABMS will help assure patients and their families that the care they receive is grounded in science and evidence-based practice,” said O’Connor in an ABMS press release. “It will also mean more visibility for this subspecialty among medical students and residents, and will ultimately increase the number of physicians who are trained and certified as addiction medicine specialists.”

The official recognition will help advance the establishment of fellowships in addiction medicine at medical schools nationwide. Yale’s medical school runs a two-year fellowship program to train future leaders in the field, which is led by Dr. Jeanette Tetrault.

O’Connor co-chaired a White House symposium in late 2015 to address the crisis of addiction through advances in medical training and practice. This month, he led a team that included Tetrault on a trip to Vietnam in order to help establish addiction medicine training in that country. D’Onofrio was recently recognized by the Butler Center for Research at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation with the 2015 Dan Anderson Research Award for her work in this area. Together, they co-authored a paper, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, about the effectiveness of emergency department-initiated treatment for opioid addiction. 

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