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A mobile addiction service for community-based overdose prevention

Pepin, Michael D
Joseph, Jillian K
Chapman, Brittany P
McAuliffe, Christina
O'Donnell, Logan K
Marano, Ryan L
Carreiro, Stephanie
Garcia, Erik J
Silk, Hugh
Babu, Kavita M
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Abstract

Mainstays of opioid overdose prevention include medications for opioid use disorder (e.g., methadone or buprenorphine) and naloxone distribution. Inadequate access to buprenorphine limits its uptake, especially in communities of color, and people with opioid use disorders encounter multiple barriers to obtaining necessary medications including insurance, transportation, and consistent availability of telephones. UMass Memorial Medical Center and our community partners sought to alleviate these barriers to treatment through the deployment of a mobile addiction service, called the Road to Care. Using this approach, multidisciplinary and interprofessional providers deliver holistic addiction care by centering our patients' needs with respect to scheduling, location, and convenience. This program also extends access to buprenorphine and naloxone among people experiencing homelessness. Additional systemic and individualized barriers encountered are identified, as well as potential solutions for future mobile addiction service utilization. Over a two-year period, we have cared for 1,121 individuals who have accessed our mobile addiction service in over 4,567 encounters. We prescribed buprenorphine/naloxone (Suboxone®) to 330 individuals (29.4% of all patients). We have distributed nearly 250 naloxone kits directly on-site or and more than 300 kits via prescriptions to local pharmacies. To date, 74 naloxone rescue attempts have been reported back to us. We have demonstrated that a community-based mobile addiction service, anchored within a major medical center, can provide high-volume and high-quality overdose prevention services that facilitate engagement with additional treatment. Our experience is described as a case study below.

Source

Pepin MD, Joseph JK, Chapman BP, McAuliffe C, O'Donnell LK, Marano RL, Carreiro SP, Garcia EJ, Silk H, Babu KM. A mobile addiction service for community-based overdose prevention. Front Public Health. 2023 Jul 19;11:1154813. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1154813. PMID: 37538275; PMCID: PMC10394629.

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10.3389/fpubh.2023.1154813
PubMed ID
37538275
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© 2023 Pepin, Joseph, Chapman, McAuliffe, O’Donnell, Marano, Carreiro, Garcia, Silk and Babu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Attribution 4.0 International