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Substance use disorder treatment and the evolving role of pharmacists with Jeffrey Bratberg, Pharm.D.
83 Plays1 month ago
In the first episode of Voices in Pharmacy Innovation, host Dave Dixon, Pharm.D. talks with Jeffrey Bratberg, Pharm.D., a clinical professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy who serves on the executive committee for the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence on Opioids and Overdose. With January being Substance Use Disorder Treatment Month, the conversation focuses on substance use disorder care among pharmacists, expanding access to treatment, reducing stigma and turning policy into practice.
Dr. Bratberg shares his path from infectious disease pharmacy to addiction care and explains why pharmacies are a natural place for people to get help. He discusses the challenges that still exist, like stigma, payment and implementation, but also highlights practical ways pharmacists can start making a difference now.
Links and resources:
- Pharmacy Bridge
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA)
- Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMERSA)
- ASHP Statement on the Pharmacist’s Role in Substance Use Disorder Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery
- ASHP Podcast - Hot Topics in Pharmacy Practice: Breaking Down ASHP's New Statement on the Pharmacist's Role in Substance Use Disorder
Connect with us and learn more about the VCU School of Pharmacy Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation through our website.
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Transcript
Introduction to Pharmacy Innovation Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Voices in Pharmacy Innovation, the podcast where we spotlight bold ideas and groundbreaking practices that are transforming pharmacy practice and healthcare care delivery. I'm Dave Dixon, professor and chair at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy and core faculty member of the Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation.
00:00:19
Speaker
In each episode, We'll sit down with pharmacists, healthcare leaders, and change makers who are rethinking how pharmacy can improve patient care and push the boundaries of what's possible in our profession.
00:00:31
Speaker
Together, we'll share stories, explore new models of practice, and amplify the voices driving pharmacy innovation forward.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Voices in Pharmacy Innovation.
Featuring Dr. Jeff Bratberg: Substance Use Disorders Expert
00:00:48
Speaker
Today, we are joined by Dr. Jeff Bratberg, clinical professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy.
00:00:54
Speaker
Dr. Bratberg is a national leader in addressing substance use disorders, and today we'll explore how he and his team are making a real difference in the lives of these individuals every day.
00:01:06
Speaker
In case you didn't know, January is Substance Use Disorder Treatment Month, and it's a reminder that recovery doesn't start with willpower, it starts with recognition. Today, one in six Americans is living with a substance use disorder, whether diagnosed or not.
00:01:23
Speaker
So it's very timely that we have Dr. Bratberg on the podcast with us today. He's truly been a national leader and advocate in this area for many years, and we have much to learn from him.
00:01:34
Speaker
So let's dive in.
00:01:46
Speaker
Dr. Bratberg, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Dr. Dixon. This is a a pleasure and an honor. I i know I've given one talk for your agency, and so it's wonderful to kick off the podcast on such an important and engaging topic.
Dr. Bratberg's Career Path and Impact of Mentorship
00:02:02
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. Before we jump into learning more about your work, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Yeah, thank you for asking. I um i did my my training originally in in North Dakota. I went to North Dakota State University. i did some residencies in Wisconsin and Michigan in infectious disease and critical care. And I became an infectious disease specialist in a hospital in in Providence, Rhode Island, or a couple hospitals. And then as I was treating and or helping the team treat people with infections, a lot of which were due to injection drug use, I became much more active in ah closing gaps in addiction care and particularly focused on addiction policy as I was also working with our state association to um expand pharmacist scope of practice there. So now they're sort of merged. I see pharmacist scope of practice, reimbursement, payment reform, all linked to ah really going back to what I did before, the syndemic of treating addiction and treating the sequelae of addiction like HIV and hepatitis C, which I've done research in, um as well as now wound care um and and making sure that folks um have a recovery that includes medications, which are the gold standard of of therapy for many substance use disorders, particularly opioid use disorder.
00:03:29
Speaker
it's really fascinating your connection and how you went from infectious disease to kind of transitioning your career focus in substance use disorder and addiction. So I think that that's that's excellent sort of way of trying to take your observations from practice and then looking to make change in ah in a different way, even if that wasn't maybe the initial career path that you set out on. So Well, I think a lot of, a lot I was just in a meeting at our university yesterday and one one of my colleagues said something that that stuck with me, which is people choose careers not based on the college or a class, but who's teaching the class or who's your mentor, who's your preceptor. And so, you know, my mentors were physicians who were like, let's go to the state house and talk about changing these laws. And I've
00:04:17
Speaker
still engaged with some of my my physician and research mentors. And so that's sort of what I do is I participate in collaborative care and collaborative documents to say, where should research in pharmacy addiction care go? Or what should the roles of pharmacists be? What's the role of community pharmacy as public health nodes that already exist in the community?
00:04:40
Speaker
How can they close the gaps in the whole cascade of addiction care, whether it's screening or referral or direct treatment or long-acting
Innovations in Opioid Disorder Treatment Access
00:04:50
Speaker
injectable treatment? All these things are happening. And I've probably become more interested in implementing things and implementation science. I started a website to talk about policy change and share toolkits. um So I'm just becoming more and more, that's the reason I accepted this podcast. This is a way to get people to say, oh,
00:05:08
Speaker
as I'm driving, this guy has some good ideas for how to change pharmacy practice. So ah hopefully that has the impact we were looking for here. Well, great. That is an excellent segue into our deep dive to learn a bit more about your work.
00:05:24
Speaker
And so I always like to think about innovation as trying to solve a problem. So describe for us what problem were you and your team trying to solve? So our problem was not enough people who want medications to treat opioid use disorder like methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone. We're not getting it.
00:05:47
Speaker
We had successfully and innovated in Rhode Island and nationally for naloxone access, asking what prescribers did, lots of policy change, lots of national attention, state attention. I'm I just am starting my 10th year as one of the founders of our governor's overdose prevention and intervention task force, which is extraordinarily multi-agency, multidisciplinary group, um looking at, again, all phases of of a harm reduction pillar, a prevention pillar, treatment, recovery, things like that. And yeah, it just, you know, the gap that I saw with naloxone as this life-saving drug We need to close gaps. How can pharmacists do it? We changed policy.
00:06:31
Speaker
And now we have the highest saturation of naloxone in the country, I think, in in Rhode Island well with a bunch of things. But naloxone is only honestly a Band-Aid, right? It keeps you alive. So what happens in those emergency departments? What happens on the street with EMS? What happens in pharmacists who are using naloxone to reverse... overdoses in their stores or their parking lots.
00:06:55
Speaker
How do we get them to treatment? Well, pharmacies have the drugs, right? And we know that prescribers or prescribing clinicians are not filling the gap. You know only one in five people, maybe one in four people are actually getting the medications that reduce not only mortality from their addiction, but from all causes. And so we said, how do we get pharmacists to,
00:07:19
Speaker
um actually prescribe the medicines that are already in their pharmacies. And so we, you know, now three years ago, we came out with ah with a paper talking about our pilot study of 100 patients, showing that 90% of them liked the care and stayed in care at 30 days, at a month of therapy.
00:07:38
Speaker
And really at six months, almost two thirds of them were still in care. And that was the length of the study. One of the limitations of the study is what we're trying to do now, which is People need to get paid for providing these professional services. This is right well known to your listeners, right? So now it's, I got a grant to study the policy change in all states and DC and Puerto Rico called pharmacybridge.org. So we'll put that in the show notes, right? Pharmacybridge.org is now the hub that also was the gap, is what is happening in these states. States are where we change laws. um Who is innovating? is it Idaho? Is it California? Is it North Carolina? Places you can get DEAs and pharmacists can prescribe.
00:08:21
Speaker
Those places also have forms of payment, right? And, know, Virginia, where you guys are, has forms of payment to pharmacists. What are the barriers there? Is it credentialing? Is it this disease state? Is it 340B access to to branded therapies like long anti-injectable buprenorphine? And so really sort of taking a whole of system look at this. And now we're just collecting stories and anecdotes and doing podcasts and saying, hey, here are the laws. here's what the priority to your law should be. Should it be scope of practice? Should it be payment? Should it be telehealth? Should it be lab testing?
00:08:58
Speaker
um How do we help people advocate for the change in the laws, but also make sure that there's a structure and foundation for implementing the laws? Because laws don't work If you're allowed to do something, then you don't do it. Policymakers say, we're not going to pass this extra stuff that you want. We're not going to authorize scope or payment when you don't seem to do the things that we did before. so now we're trying to merge those things, provide toolkits, make toolkits, um checklists and things that say, here's what you do to do with CPA, if that's going to work in your community pharmacy, or here's the steps to become an independent practitioner.
00:09:32
Speaker
And, you know, I know it's substance abuse, substance use disorder of treatment month. I think it's really interesting that this is the thing where there's the largest gaps and we see the largest benefit when people actually get the meds that they <unk> want. and and and And it isn't just mortality reduction. It's literally life changing meds. um You know, we're we pharmacists in the community are willing and ready to um to prescribe these meds.
00:09:58
Speaker
So I think a key word that you've said multiple times is implementation. Yeah. Right.
Addressing Stigma and Education in Pharmacy
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah. And so I hear you say that the tools are there. We've made incredible progress from a legislative standpoint, not saying there isn't much room for improvement, but we have made progress. Yeah.
00:10:17
Speaker
And so what do you think it is that that is one of the key barriers or maybe one of our that might resonate with our listeners in terms of a small thing that they could think about in their own practice, or what have you learned from your work that's a a key barrier for ah frontline clinicians in making sure that they're implementing what your team has shown to to be effective?
00:10:45
Speaker
So I wish I knew the answer to what makes it effective. I think I can speak generally to say, anytime you start something new, the brain registers pain. And so every time I teach my students something new or at, you know, and and pharmacists have been asked to do more and more and more. i can't, that is- and and And payment can alleviate that.
00:11:06
Speaker
But I always i always i slide on the quintuple aim, which really originally was the triple aim, which says help populations, help patients, make sure it's cost effective. Well, we we know addiction care is all those things.
00:11:18
Speaker
But the other two things that were added to that are the the workforce, the health of the workforce, and then also health equity. So health equity, I think we cover with pharmacies, they're in rural areas, they're doing all these things. But we also know that health equity is suffering, pharmacies are closing.
00:11:34
Speaker
We need them to be paid to just stay open to provide not only addiction care, but other things. But realize all of the expansion I see nationally and in states for scope of practice, are because of gaps that exist because of stigma.
00:11:47
Speaker
So reproductive health is stigmatized, smoking cessation is stigmatized, right? HIV, pep and prep. These are all things that many states are doing, some very successfully. But now we need to make sure they're integrated into our um into our didactic and experiential programs, residency programs. We did that with addiction care in family medicine residencies and primary care residencies and physicians. We now have to make... that make make this standard. um i always say that if if a state can pass tobacco use disorder treatment accessible, that's just an interview to say, oh, you want treatment.
00:12:24
Speaker
We need to make societies and families comfortable that people who have addiction, whether it's alcohol or cannabis or stimulants or opioids, can go into the pharmacy and I want treatment, which was the first two patients I saw three years ago. They said,
00:12:40
Speaker
I want my use of fentanyl at 10 a.m. today be the last I have. And it's 2 p.m. The pharmacy was there. The pharmacists were trained. Our procedures were in place and they left with therapy that will keep them alive at least that day.
00:12:55
Speaker
and and and And again, of the, you know, the patients who did stay in therapy that they're alive today because of because we provided access to something. We provided choice. I always say, know,
00:13:08
Speaker
we're not taking away anything by expanding care to pharmacists as clinicians. We're just giving people more choice, some of whom who never had a choice. And I think we treated a lot of folks that way in our study. And we aim for implementation to say, let's destigmatize this. And and I think everyone who treats addiction say,
00:13:28
Speaker
We don't want to tell people you're stigmatized, but we want to say, i want you to treat one person and see how they do. And I think that you'll be willing to treat everybody who comes through your door once you once you see the success of these medications for one person.
00:13:44
Speaker
Absolutely. So as you have hinted at, anytime that we are trying to innovate or make change, we have some successes, but we also have challenges. So what are one or two key lessons that you've learned from your successes and challenges along the way?
Challenges and Solutions in Collaborative Practices
00:14:06
Speaker
I think that you know our our so our project is looking at collaborative practice agreements in community settings. And and you know I think collaborative practice, I think working collaboratively let's sounds great. Expanding practice is great.
00:14:19
Speaker
But working out payments and documentation and sharing systems in the community is exponentially greater than in office settings where pharmacists or inpatient settings where I've worked, where everyone has access to the EHR. Hopefully you can take notes and people do all those things. But we were still faxing notes to the docs who signed the CPAs.
00:14:41
Speaker
um We are still figuring out how do we who gets the payment for the visit at the pharmacy in a CPA. So while there are many more states that... allow CPAs for controlled substances like buprenorphine. It's so much easier. And again, easier means less time, less time spent on the clinical service means it's more likely to be implemented, more likely to be sustained. As pharmacists need to, at least for addiction care, need to be independent practitioners and a referral source for ah other healthcare providers who want to refer their patients to get just treated at the pharmacy, that works. Right. Or as as hubs that send folks to say, OK, we're going to refer you to this other care, but you'll always have your meds here at the pharmacy. There's lots of steps to take, but it really needs to be independent practitioners from a documentation and payment and referral source standpoint. I think that's if you're going do policy change, you really need independent practice for this.
00:15:43
Speaker
I couldn't agree more. And I anticipate as we go through future episodes on this podcast, that that will be a consistent message from many of our guests. And I can't help but also as a side note here, you know, you mentioned fax machines.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, it is fascinating that in 2026 that the fax machine is still thriving. Yeah. Yes. Not even with paper. It's, it's almost, it's fax software is what we probably should which, which is also helpful. I mean, from a, from a, you know, if you work in the, in the VA system, it's the same software everywhere.
00:16:22
Speaker
Software that all of us taxpayers paid for. It could be a national healthcare information system, but that's another, it's another podcast probably from an expert within that system. Um, But I think that, you know, some of the workarounds that some of my colleagues are doing is saying, okay, you fax it and it gets put into the independent pharmacy systems. We're working within independent systems and and and chain systems. um There are some chains that use very popular EHRs like Epic.
00:16:51
Speaker
um But they're not, again, they that they don't have all the features. um you know While I could use my hospital system to make notes and check on patients before I even got to the hospital, just remote access. And this was 15 years ago.
00:17:04
Speaker
a lot of people have remote access on their phones and things. That's just not what's happening here. ah you're you're You're still using facts to sort of document what you do. And we're not documenting that much stuff. I think that you know my colleague, ah physician Sarah Wakeman, who runs the addiction treatment bridge clinic at Mass General um and the addiction services there,
00:17:26
Speaker
we have to stop thinking about addiction being difficult to treat, which is perhaps a proxy for difficult patients, right? I sort of dislike the term about difficult patients. It's like you've had a difficult childhood, which led to likely adverse childhood experiences and and a trauma.
00:17:44
Speaker
And that's the other thing that may be a barrier is, boy, if all healthcare care professionals realized what degree trauma underlies so many chronic diseases, whether they're behavioral health or physical health,
00:17:56
Speaker
I think that we would be more compassionate to each other, more compassionate for our patients, our students. um I think that's a universal that I would like to see applied, not just to addiction care, but to really sort of all care to the to the benefit of everyone involved.
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, i love that message of of empathy, right? um You know, in my clinical world and in cardiovascular practice, I encounter quite a few patients that are also struggling with substance use disorder.
00:18:28
Speaker
And so while am certainly not an expert in the area over the years, I've really had to challenge myself to learn a bit more and also challenge my own ability to be empathetic to these individuals and as we should be with all of our patients, but recognizing that everyone has a different background and different path in life. And, ah you know, we're here to serve, right? That's what this, that's why we're in this profession.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah. And to be very clear, we can be Pollyanna and say, let's treat everybody as a human, but we all come from a society that massively criminalizes drug use and has massive stigma against people. and And I think that the simplest, and this is complex, but to say, we treat human, if we if we believe someone's human, we treat them as a human. They're a family member, they're our a patient, they're a colleague, a student. right The moment that you have policies that that impose a dehumanizing quality or literally dehumanizes people. It literally makes us makes it easier and acceptable to treat criminals as less, not just other, but just less or nothing.
00:19:40
Speaker
and And it is an image in our head. If you think of someone who injects drugs, it's disgust. And that the the parts of our brain that light up with disgust it makes it very difficult to be empathetic for them.
00:19:53
Speaker
It takes a lot of energy. And and that goes to that quintuple aim is that we need to, stigma training isn't a one-time thing, right? and Identifying discrimination isn't there. And I treat stigma and discrimination against all folks for whatever reason, whatever identity, as as a constant ebb and flow on on where where we're at. you know It's just like med errors. We don't blame people for med errors. You say, what's with the system? Yeah.
00:20:18
Speaker
And in addiction, wow, it is a big societal system that says this person's bad and doesn't deserve things. And I wrote i wrote a paper to say it's about dignity, right? We all want dignity.
00:20:30
Speaker
But it's hard to recognize someone's dignity when you think about their crimes when you think about drug use, when you think about why they have this wound and not more about why did you take two months to come in? you know, again, in cardiovascular care, how many people's diabetes and hypertension are uncontrolled because they were just afraid to tell their health care provider that they had it?
00:20:51
Speaker
Sure. That's hypertension. Now, imagine you're saying, yeah, i inject illegal opioids. Imagine how difficult that is to tell a provider and how we need to be ready to accept that.
00:21:05
Speaker
And again, to come back to what I do is to say, and have the solutions. Pharmacists I talk to in all kinds of fields, especially public health is, wow, if you allow me the ability to actually solve a problem and keep someone alive, I'm going to do that.
00:21:20
Speaker
I'm going to do chronic medication management, I'm going to do a long acting injectable antipsychotics. I'm going to do any of these things. If you give me the ability, I'm now more interested in doing this in closing those gaps in care, um, by giving again, people more options to both, uh, say those things and then to be able to get treated and have remarkable outcomes.
00:21:44
Speaker
Right.
Implementing Pharmacy Innovations
00:21:45
Speaker
Right. Well said. All right, so let's move on to some broader implications and and identifying a couple of take home points for our listeners. So if others wanted to replicate or implement this type of of effort in their community or in their practice setting, what's one small thing that they could do? You know, we go back to the issue of implementation that we've talked about several times. So what's the low hanging fruit here?
00:22:16
Speaker
Well, it is so great that pharmacybridge.org exists. And so you can go there and find your state and find out what the laws are. Maybe you don't know that you can independently or use a CPA to administer buprenorphine.
00:22:30
Speaker
There you go. now you Now you at least have a piece of knowledge to do that. Maybe you don't know that In New Mexico, if you get a, just as an example, you can get an advanced practice um designation and you can prescribe and get paid equitably for prescribe for for managing patients on buprenorphine. That's great.
00:22:51
Speaker
um we We want to get the word out on what can be done right now because policy change is also easy to say and hard to do. right But I think that we and we're writing a paper on this right now, on you know to convince someone to change policy is to say that there's no way you could say no.
00:23:12
Speaker
Somebody told me that. And so it's the idea of like, there's a gap, we're trained, we're present. It's not a workforce development. It's not a 10-year grant. This is flip the switch and allow pharmacists to get DEAs. I think that's the other thing. If you live in a state that allows you to be registered in the DEA, go get it.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. right um And then once you have that Think of all the other diseases that you can likely treat by being able to prescribe controlled substances. A scary thing, but I would say prescribing is the last 10% of the 90% of what pharmacists already do. We already check interactions, make sure the drug is right, make sure it's guideline developed, make sure the regimen.
00:23:53
Speaker
This is why pharmacists are med experts and honestly, I think should get a specialist payment for being an expert, right? um Right. And so i think that's I think those are the things is like get the knowledge and then start mapping out, okay, how do I incorporate this into my practice?
00:24:10
Speaker
Go through, get credentialed if you can be paid by commercial or or or state public payers. um you know If your state hasn't expanded Medicaid, I'm not saying, hey, individual, go try to change that in your state. um That's very difficult. um but But there's definitely things that you can do to say, what what is the small part? I think the other small part is just stocking buprenorphine.
00:24:33
Speaker
Studies have shown 20% of pharmacies aren't even stocking. well Some for good reasons, some for not. If you don't have the if you don't have the volume, if your drug's expiring, your expensive drug is expiring on the shelf, of course you're not going to carry it. So even finding out, hey, how do I partner with addiction providers? Or maybe an addiction provider reaches out to you or to...
00:24:57
Speaker
you know, where you're working and saying, we'd like to partner with you to to prescribe this drug, have a discussion about how important is how life-saving this drug is and how, you know you will have that patient potentially for life, right? Buprenorphine is not temporary for some folks, and which may be another another barrier. So I think just educating yourself on how good these drugs are, making these partnerships happen and understand that There's not just gaps in prescribing, but there's gaps in availability of the drug and how much better the life of that person could be that they don't drive an hour or half an hour to the pharmacy who stocks it, but to the one that is the one they get all their meds from.
00:25:39
Speaker
Absolutely. That was incredibly helpful. And I think there's some great advice there for our listeners. So thank you for sharing that. ah So let's move on to our quick fire round. So we have a few questions here as we look to to close out this first episode.
00:25:55
Speaker
So what resources have you found most influential in your own thinking about innovation in pharmacy practice from your experience? um I think that the most recent thing that came out is the National Academies of Science Innovations in Pharmacy ah publication. I think there's it's it's ah it's a long document. It's very rich.
00:26:18
Speaker
right You probably are aware of it. um um I was just happy to have a quote in it. So i that's my that's my thing. i wasn't My name's not in it, but my quote is in it. And that's make my achievement. Yeah.
00:26:29
Speaker
I think that's important. I think you started off with a great thing to say, you know, innovation is about finding problems. And I think everything I do in service or policy or advocacy or teaching is identifying the problem. Right. And I think that's.
00:26:45
Speaker
being able to, to read a lot of different things and say, well, what is the problem? Or I gave a talk on policy and in Minnesota recently. And it's the, it's the why i say students, you may know nothing about intensive care today, your first day in may your first rotation. But if you ask people why you have become an essential part of that patient's care, the team's care, you're present that that's important. And so, um I think that there are there's, you know from an addiction standpoint, there's SAMHSA documents, the tip 63 is phenomenal. SAMHSA also has an implementation guide. The VA a has been a ah massive leader in in how pharmacists are prescribers and and getting addiction care, especially for opioid use disorder out. So they have publicly available guides. um
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's the things off the top my head, I guess. Oh, ASAM, of course, has ah has a wonderful guide. and And those, again, all publicly available. And pharmacybridge.org has a large section on resources that you can have links to all those documents.
00:27:51
Speaker
So that's plug number two. Plug number two. I'm not sure that we can do more. Public radio, so I get three. I have to say it three times. So what advice would you give students, trainees, or even early career pharmacists who want to do work in this field?
Encouragement for Future Pharmacists and Wrap-up
00:28:07
Speaker
That's the why not, right? Why am I not? Addictions to public health, you know, opioid use disorder and overdose is a public health emergency. It has been since 2017. It's not treated as that.
00:28:19
Speaker
And so ask why not? um Why of it why you know demand pharmacy education? like Everything is in in some ways a business and we serve what students want. And so you will get the addiction training if you ask for it.
00:28:36
Speaker
And just as you've alluded to, or you as you stated, that many of your patients being treated for chronic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, have addiction. we need to know this as a comorbidity and you're not going to deliver the primary care you want and achieve those quality indicators that often pay for pharmacists when some addiction is not treated.
00:28:56
Speaker
And so I think that's to, to know that there's a behavior. We always talk about adherence, right. And behavioral indicators of taking medications. Well, boy, you know what a big behavior to taking medications is, is if you have an untreated addiction. And so we need to make sure that We have the tools to identify, to screen, refer, and in some ways make it part of primary care and treat.
00:29:20
Speaker
Great, great point. So I also like to personally just always think about something I'm looking forward to, and this can be personal or professional. So so Jeff, what's something that you're looking forward to say, in the next six to 12 months?
00:29:37
Speaker
I'm looking forward to, um i think... Boy, what am I looking forward to? um Expanding my website, pharmacybridge.org. See, I knew I'd put it in there. Nice, there you go um ah so ah So truly you know getting some some papers out on our policy change, barriers and facilitators to policy change in this area.
00:29:57
Speaker
i have some presentations coming up on the role of the pharmacist in addition care and sort of the community pharmacy as the hub and spoke of the system and making it an essential, what it already is, but a more essential part of the system.
00:30:10
Speaker
um I would love to see um you know increasing numbers. i'm excited to talk to pharmacists and and put them on my website and say, hey, this person did it in your state, do more in that state. Or how did you change the law in Colorado allowing statewide protocol for this? Let's see where these innovations go. Let's track the implementation. So I think it's more of an ongoing thing I'm looking forward to.
00:30:35
Speaker
um You know, finishing my grant, getting folks approved CPAs and having it be evaluated and saying, hey, this is this is the toolkit. Let's use it Let's grow.
00:30:45
Speaker
I'm working with some states on changing their policy based on some of the research. So excited to sort of provide technical assistance to states to say, where were your barriers and what you've already done?
00:30:57
Speaker
Is it an implementation barrier or is it a policy barrier? And let's let's you know open the floodgates and say, how do we change this? And and what is going to be the beneficial effect downstream?
00:31:10
Speaker
Well, that's wonderful, Jeff. And I want to thank you again ah for joining us on this inaugural episode, sharing your story, your insights, and your passion ah for ah individuals you know suffering with substance use disorders. And I know that you'll mention PharmacyBridge.org, but are there other ways that our listeners can connect with you to learn more about your work?
00:31:35
Speaker
um I mean, my i always say that my my my phone number and email are public on the web, and I i keep getting emails saying that that's a danger, but um I don't, ah you know, I'm easily contactable. Again, I do have, at this point, a voluntary goal to to work with anyone to to highlight your story, get the information out. I mean, I write papers, but as you know, as an academic, sometimes the paper that's read by nine of your friends just stays within your friends. I want to try to make that you know make that wider, more widely available.
00:32:08
Speaker
um I think immersa.org. So there's organization I've been involved with for 10 years as well, the Association for Multidisciplinary Education in Substance Use and Addiction. That's a long title. We call it Immersa, but we have a pharmacist special interest group. And so you can think about joining that group and and and really Every year there's there's wonderful new things I learn about. And we have a community that we're exchanging information in that organization as well.
00:32:35
Speaker
So I think that's a big resource. They have lots of public policy statements. We have an advocacy team. We've done state level work. We do federal level work. um So that that's a great group to just get the sense of like, do I just need to sign my name to this thing or what policy efforts are being changed? And so I think that's that's ah a leader that pharmacists are a growing part of.
00:32:56
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, thank you again. And I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in to this inaugural episode of Voices in Pharmacy Innovation.
00:33:07
Speaker
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00:33:21
Speaker
Thank you for listening to today's episode. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or by visiting our website linked in the show notes. If you have any questions or comments, you can contact us through our email cppi at vcu.edu.
00:33:37
Speaker
We appreciate your engagement and look forward to having you join us next month.