Conclusion
Although health care providers attending these CME sessions were surveyed on patientcentric questions, over half of the responses collected were provider-centric in nature. The results suggest that health care professionals face barriers in addressing the opioid crisis and providing care to patients with SUDs, but they also recognize that these patients face barriers in seeking treatment. The feedback provided by medical providers in this study contributes to a growing body of literature that illuminates barriers to care for patients with SUDs. Careful attention to this data as well as data collected from the recovery community will allow for improved provider education and care for these patients.
The CME project served as a launchpad for fruitful and ongoing community-university partnerships—some that are now fortunate enough to have been funded by large federal grants—that have expanded beyond the health care setting to include the recovery community as well as pharmacy students. These interdisciplinary, multipronged, and multifactorial approaches, which include both diverse health care providers and individuals impacted personally by SUDs, are necessary to make progress in addressing the opioid crisis.