Yale professors pursue progress on addiction medicine education at White House symposium

The opioid addiction and overdose crisis has spurred action among researchers, physicians, and policymakers to promote research and patient care on addiction. Last September, chief of general internal medicine Patrick O’Connor, the Dan Adams and Amanda Adams Professor of General Medicine at Yale, co-chaired a symposium on addiction medicine convened at the White House. The event brought together national leaders on addiction to discuss strategies to advance prevention and treatment of addiction in the United States.

Among the strategies O’Connor and others promoted at that event were the establishment of addiction medicine as an official medical subspecialty and the expansion of fellowship programs to train physicians. In part, as a result, addiction medicine was approved as a new subspecialty by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) in October 2015, when O’Connor was the president of the American Board of Addiction Medicine.

One year later, on Oct. 25, 2016, two more Yale professors joined O’Connor at the second White House symposium, “Medicine Responds to Addiction II.” The Yale leaders were deputy dean for education Richard Belitsky and professor adjunct Eric Holmboe, who is also senior vice president at the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

“While the science of addiction has advanced greatly over the last 60 years, physician education has lagged far behind, and as a result patients are not getting the care that they need,” said O’Connor. “This year’s symposium was designed to focus on translating scientific advances into enhanced physician education at the medical school and residency level in order to assure that patients receive evidence-based care.”

Held at the White House, the 2016 symposium featured talks by directors of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. They presented the “State of the Art of Addiction Science and Practice” from the perspective of their programs and institutes. Additional experts in addiction medicine and medical education presented a blueprint for how to integrate education on addiction throughout medical school and residency training. 

“Yale’s leadership in advancing the science of addiction is second to none.”

— Dr. Patrick O’Connor

O’Connor, Belitsky, and Holmboe, along with Dr. Robert Englander (YSM ‘87) from the University of Minnesota, focused on the importance of integrating addiction education within the core competencies of medical school and residency education. Their discussion outlined a pathway to achieving the goal of having physicians provide state-of-the art care to those suffering from addiction.

O’Connor and Belitsky highlighted Yale’s role in advancing addiction medicine and explored ways to enhance the training of students and residents. “Yale’s leadership in advancing the science of addiction is second to none, and now is the time the to leverage our faculty’s expertise to enhance education in this critical area,” O’Connor said. 

Belitsky noted: “We appreciate the importance of this call to action, and are eager to do our part to ensure that our medical students and future physicians are prepared to meet the needs of patients with addictive disorders. We are fortunate to have faculty who are leading experts in addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry, and we are relying on this talented group to inspire and inform our efforts to enhance our curriculum.”

As an important first step in this process at Yale established a School of Medicine addiction task force that will take a broad and detailed look at the Yale curriculum to see how well medical students are currently taught about addiction.  Noted Belitsky: “This group will be making specific recommendations about how to enhance our current efforts as well as adding new content as needed.”

Along with encouraging all medical schools to integrate meaningful content on addiction into their curricula, a longer-term goal of The White House symposium is to encourage the creation of “Centers of Excellence” in addiction medicine research, education, and patient care at medical centers across the United States. 

Video recordings of the symposium can be found at the White House website.