NIH awards renewal grant to BMC's CARE unit to expand education of physicians-in-training

The Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit (www.bumc.bu.edu/CARE) in the Section of General Internal Medicine at BMC was recently awarded a $1,886,087 renewal grant from the National Institutes of Health to expand its education of physicians-in-training to become sophisticated implementers of substance use screening, assessment and treatment research.

This is the second renewal from the national institute on Drug Abuse to fund this R25 education grant for years 11-15. In addition, the CARE Unit conducts research, provides health care and informs clinical and public health practice and policy to improve the lives of people with unhealthy alcohol and other drug use.

According to the Principal Investigator of the grant Jeffrey Samet, MD, MA, MPH, the treatment of patients with drug abuse is limited by a shortage of physicians qualified to conduct clinical addiction research and trained to translate research advances into practice. "Expertise in addiction medicine is a notable deficiency among two groups of physicians who could provide great benefit with such skills: physicians who provide primary medical care to people with addictions and physicians who provide care for patients with HIV and Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Although effective approaches to screen, assess and treat addiction are being developed, the supply of physicians to implement these advances lags behind," he added.