Roz King received major SAMHSA grant

Roz King, MSN, RN received notice of award for a Medication Assisted Treatment-Prescription Drug and Opioid Addiction (MAT-PDOA) grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). 

Title: Start Treatment and Recovery (STAR) 

Amount: $3,749,030 over five years 

Working with Dan Wolfson, MD, Miles Lamberson, EMT, Sanchit Maruti, MD, Rick Rawson, PhD, Elly Riser, MD, John Brooklyn MD, Kyle DeWitt, PharmD, Blake Porter, PharmD, and Nick Aunchman, MD, this project will expand and improve our successful program of Emergency Department (ED)-initiated medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) to include an innovative methadone treatment pathway. We will improve screening to better identify OUD, remove barriers to ED MOUD enrollment and follow-up, improve critical supports for participant success in follow-up recovery, and widen the distribution of harm reduction kits in the prehospital and ED settings. The population of focus includes patients in a large rural and urban catchment area who present to EMS or the EDs of the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) or Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital (CVPH) with an acute opioid overdose or other signs of opioid use disorder (OUD) who are candidates for starting Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD).  

With the continued rise in opioid-related overdose fatalities in these areas, our goal is to address the need to increase the number of individuals with OUD that are screened for risk, offered MOUD and harm-reduction kits, and are successfully enrolled and maintained in certified MOUD community addiction recovery programs, thereby decreasing illicit opioid use, prescription opioid misuse, and risk of opioid overdose. 

These collaborative efforts would not have been possible without the support and assistance of a team of collaborators across the University of Vermont Health Network, the Larner College of Medicine, the University of Vermont, and our greater medical community. Deep appreciation is given particularly to Molly Stevens, Ramsey Herrington, Meaghan McKenna, Deb Cannon, Cam Lauf and the Peer Recovery team, the Addiction Treatment Program, and Peter Callas for helping to make this possible. 

Congratulations to everyone involved. 

Ramsey Herrington, MD, FACEP

Healthcare Service Leader, Emergency Medicine

Chair of The Department of Emergency Medicine

Chair, UVMHN Emergency Medicine Specialty Council