AHP leverages its experience in behavioral and primary health systems to help organizations navigate the shifting regulatory, financial, clinical, and technological demands of the health care environment.

AHP’s approach to implementing evidence-based practices is founded on an understanding of the consequences experienced by individuals and families affected by the opioid epidemic. The group works with health and behavioral health providers, county agencies, and health plans (including managed care plans) to empower communities to develop initiatives and redesign systems of care that prevent initiation of use, reduce harm, and halt the loss of life due to opioid use. AHP’s targeted opioid interventions take shape after a comprehensive needs assessment that includes data/document review, situational analysis, and readiness for change assessment.

AHP understands that the consequences experienced by individuals and families affected by the opioid epidemic reverberate at the community level, and the organization believes that sustainable solutions are rooted in the same place.

Aegis is supported in medical, clinical, quality, operations, legal, policy, and strategy by department heads who provide hands-on support to organizations seeking assistance. Aegis clinic locations can be used as training sites for providers to learn about the support systems and treatment modalities required for comprehensive MAT programs. The group aims to support organizations in the discovery and development of a network of addiction treatment providers to address patient care from a holistic standpoint and provide wraparound services for patients which results in long-term recovery.

Additionally, as facilitators of the California Hub and Spoke System grant, Aegis is working with the Department of Health Care Services, the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Program, the California Health Care Foundation, and other organizations to increase the use of MAT in California. Another goal is to increase the number of X-waivered prescribers in the state, and Aegis, with additional support and coaching from the other agencies, will implement similar initiatives in regions beyond the grant.

Erickson has experience implementing and managing high-profile health care programs and initiatives at health centers across the country, with an emphasis on chronic pain and substance use disorder. These programs support primary care providers with guideline-informed preventative care, encouraging the non-pharmacological treatment of pain, responsible opioid prescribing, and expanding access to and integrating with medication-assisted treatment in primary care.

Erickson has 14 years of leadership experience in the health care industry and has been an advocate for using innovation and technology to improve access to effective, evidence-based treatment and to improve efficiency and quality of care. Her efforts are focused on addressing and tackling the public health “hot spots” in both rural and urban communities.

Heinrici’s approach is based on treating the whole person with multiple modalities, conventional and complementary. She practices a broad range of medicine, including primary and preventative medicine, women’s health and options counseling, and addiction and recovery medicine. She has years of experience in the fields of detoxification and addiction medicine. The opioid epidemic pulled her to serve the community in this area. This includes her work to promote all approaches to addiction, including education and prevention, improving access to care, and promoting harm/risk reduction.

Heinrici is currently the addiction specialist for a large Federally Qualified Health Center. She also provides medical directorship to local residential treatment centers.

AIR works in primary care settings to create and implement comprehensive MAT delivery models that include intensive provider training in the fundamentals of addiction medicine, practice facilitation, case-based learning, and tailored consultation by physician experts. AIR works with its partners to increase local access to needed pharmacologic and psychosocial services. The organization also assesses and works with provider offices, counties, and health plans to identify and overcome implementation barriers and establish sustainable and effective MAT programs.

AIR’s Center for Multi-System Solutions to the Opioid Epidemic provides clinical, regulatory, and policy expertise at the national and state level to help curb the opioid epidemic. AIR works on opioid initiatives in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and California.

He is an assistant professor of addiction medicine in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), David Geffen School of Medicine. He is on the executive board of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and co-chairs the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ Substance Use Disorders Workgroup and the SafeMedLA Medications for Addiction Treatment Action Team.

Hurley provides technical assistance in the delivery of medications for addiction treatment to community health centers, clinical programs, and agencies across the United States. Additionally, he is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers, and provides training in motivational interviewing nationwide. He completed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA, and was previously a Veterans Administration (VA) National Quality Scholar at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He completed a fellowship program in addiction psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, and residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital, where he was chief resident in addiction psychiatry.

It offers consultative services to executive leadership and managers within organizations for quality improvement, health and safety, credentialing, accreditation, and regulatory compliance.

CFCB aims to effectively matrix consultants and experts committed to ensuring that all health plans and health systems launch organization-wide opioid initiatives, with the goal of driving down opioid-related morbidity and mortality in California.

In addition to offering a comprehensive statewide training and technical assistance program, CPCA also actively works on policy issues that impact community health centers and the patients they serve. For these reasons, the association is positioned to provide both policy and programmatic training and technical assistance to community health centers on many topics, including integrating medication-assisted treatment into primary care.

Led by Andrew Herring, MD, in Oakland, California, ED-Bridge is a program through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration State Targeted Response to the Opioid Crisis Grant to the California Department of Health Care Services. The program specializes in providing medication-assisted treatment in the emergency department.

EM Consulting works exclusively in and with safety-net health care systems, including community clinics, Medi-Cal and Medicare health plans, county behavioral health and medical services, and foundations and institutions focused on health equity. Elizabeth Morrison, principle consultant, and her multidisciplinary team have a strength-based philosophy that informs their approach to organizational consultation. The core principle of facilitating, supporting, and elevating the human connection in health care provision is central to EM Consulting’s strategy and practices.

The team has worked with health plans in California to develop and implement large, multi-site medication-assisted treatment and complex care initiatives, as well as to integrate the administration of the behavioral health benefit into health plan operations. EM Consulting has provided individualized motivational interviewing Train the Trainer programs to Federally Qualified Health Centers and other health providers, and has partnered with the Institute for Healthcare Communication to create an interactive workshop titled “The Empathy Effect: Mitigating Bias to Improve Health Care Outcomes,” which is conducted in the US and Canada.

In addition, Chung is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Society of Addiction medicine. His areas of interest include substance use disorder, literacy and health care, gang rehabilitation, and homelessness.

The group engages providers who are prescribing outside of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline-based norms, including those in harder to reach areas, using a tiered approach aimed at impacting overall prescribing patterns.

• The first tier involves engaging community-based pharmacists with outlier prescribers.
• The second tier engages local physicians who are opioid experts if the pharmacists are not able to create lasting change.
• The final tier, should the first two fail to produce results, involves bringing in national experts and taking a team-based approach to education.

HMA has experience in identifying and developing educational resources for outlier prescribers. The firm has more than 200 consultants, many of whom have held senior positions in health plans, managed and accountable care organizations, provider systems, and state and federal agencies.

Sepulveda holds board certifications from both the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Preventive Medicine. He has held a buprenorphine prescribing waiver since 2010.

He has extensive experience treating opioid-dependent patients as well as providing technical assistance, training, and coaching to fellow providers in addition to medical staff, administrators, students, and lay people. He founded and currently leads FHCSD’s MAT program, overseeing clinical planning, implementation, and ongoing development through the organization’s 23 primary health care clinics, seven behavioral health facilities, 14 substance abuse treatment centers, and its mobile Clean Syringe Exchange Program.

Bachman is a licensed psychologist and has served in senior and executive roles at Stanford Hospital, El Dorado County Mental Health Department, United Behavioral Health Care, and in his own private practice in Palo Alto, California. He has worked with inpatient and outpatient programs, and has provided consulting services on topics including quality, staff retention, and performance improvement.

Currently, his work at El Dorado Community Health Center has been integral in developing the center’s complex care clinic and its medication-assisted treatment program for opioid-dependent patients.

Mega prescribes low-threshold MAT in Contra Costa. The county’s HCH medical outreach van sees patients twice weekly in the street and prescribes buprenorphine for patients with opioid use disorder. These patients are either linked to the MAT program, or receive follow-up care in the field or in the office as is convenient for them. Patients are given Narcan kits and safe injection kits. Mega and the county are working to expand this program with upcoming HRSA funding.

Additionally, Mega wrote the county ED’s MAT protocol and worked with the department head to get it up and running. He worked in the county jail for about a year during a transition in leadership and continues to work closely with the lead physician there to facilitate a more progressive and organized MAT program. He and the team are part of the detention MAT learning collaborative in Sacramento.

Additionally, Mega works at a jail transition clinic as part of the Transition Clinic Network.

JSI has evaluated primary care and behavioral health integration across 67 sites in Maine, assessed the integration of care between medical, substance use, and mental health providers in Vermont, and worked with a collaborative in Humboldt County, California, to facilitate the development and design of an Accountable Community for Health focused on alcohol and other drug misuse. It has worked specifically on MAT projects in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Maine.

Saffier has practiced medicine for many years. He was director of the Addiction Education Champions Project of the Medical Education and Research Foundation for the Treatment of Addiction, designed to integrate addiction medicine into residency curricula. He is also a board member of the foundation.

He has been a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers since 2012. He has provided over 50 motivational interviewing training sessions, including workshops at national conferences, and has also provided training for multiple health systems, hospitals, health centers, and residency training programs. He teaches topics in addiction medicine and has partnered in the presentation of multiple educational workshops.

Saffier is also an active mentor in the Providers Clinical Support System for Medication-Assisted Therapies and for five years has conducted Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration–approved buprenorphine waiver training sessions on local and regional levels and at national conferences of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

After moving to California, he continued to work toward institutionalizing evidence-based and best practices in treatment for substance use disorder, including medication-assisted treatment. In his current role, he has contributed to the development of a complete behavioral health clinic, including mental health and substance use disorders, in a managed care system.

During her residency, she did several electives at various types of buprenorphine clinics, including the Office-Based Buprenorphine Induction Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco; a private practice addiction clinic in Sacramento; and a community-based clinic also in Sacramento.

At Lifelong, Netherland works together with a case manager and recovery support counselor to provide the full scope of assessment, induction, stabilization, and maintenance to patients. She provided support to physicians as Lifelong expanded MAT services to its other clinics. She provides mentorship, consults, and facilitates the clinical case conferences at monthly MAT meetings.

Hadded has been prescribing buprenorphine for opioid use disorders since 2007, and led the growth of CHC’s MAT programs to all 12 sites across the agency. Since January 2012, Haddad has led CHC’s Project ECHO HIV, hepatitis C, and buprenorphine programs, reaching numerous clinics and providers in multiple states across the nation.

He has taught and lectured at state and national conferences on HIV, hepatitis C, buprenorphine, and integrated care. He has published research on the integration of buprenorphine in community health centers, examining substance use and primary care outcomes.

Murray has conducted training in group therapy and for the state of New Hampshire, in addition to assisting physicians in prescribing buprenorphine and extended-release naltrexone. He is participating in the development of a regional integrated treatment network, and helping transition patients according to American Society of Addiction Medicine criteria between different levels of care. He also spent decades as a language instructor in Japan, New Zealand, Qatar, and Indonesia.

This program provides clinical leaders with the tools they need to start and maintain patients on buprenorphine or methadone during hospitalizations for any condition, be it medical, surgical, or obstetric. Specialists from the University of California, San Francisco provide a suite of supports: coaching, toolkits, protocols, monographs for pharmacy and therapeutics committees, webinars, and onsite presentations.

Silverman has received numerous awards recognizing his leadership and dedication to the improvement of his community. He has deep knowledge and experience with the relationship between substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and incarceration. He is a frequent speaker to political, business, and community groups on the need for justice system reform to prevent homelessness, enhance public safety, and reduce costs for California’s taxpayers by helping former inmates to avoid recidivism and re-incarceration.

Nguyen is able to provide training and technical assistance on integrating medication-assisted treatment into primary care settings in the following areas:

• Coaching clinician leaders
• Coaching administrative leaders in implementing new programs
• Providing clinical training on MAT
• Providing staff training in MAT, trauma-informed care, motivational interviewing, and other topics
• Helping leaders develop readiness assessment and build workplans

At Ventura County Medical Center, he has built and leads the addiction medicine curriculum, and leads the DATA 2000 waiver training for residents and community physicians. He is a board-certified addiction subspecialist and has an interest in the management of substance use disorders during pregnancy.

The SUW is a free clinician-to-clinician telephone consultation service that provides education and directly supports clinicians in implementing opioid safety and addiction treatment. The SUW multidisciplinary team of dedicated substance use, HIV, and hepatitis experts and educators includes addiction medicine–certified physicians, clinical pharmacists, and advanced practice nurses.

Key components of SUW consultations include developing individualized strategies to identify patients at risk, advising on safer opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing, facilitating realistic medication changes, implementing overdose prevention strategies, connecting patients with opioid and substance treatment programs, implementing MAT, and discussing complex comorbidities and social supports with the goal of developing alternative treatment plans for patients. SUW consultations are both case-specific consultations and general discussions. All consultations are confidential for both the prescriber and patient per HIPAA standards.

A unique strength of the SUW is that SUW consultants provide colleague-to-colleague individualized case consultation as needed by the treating clinician. The process is nonjudgmental and goal-directed. The SUW is available Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM (PT).