Building Capacity in the Integrated Health Workforce: A Focus on Substance Use Education

Drug overdose deaths in the United States continue to persist and remain a major public health problem. From May 2019 to May 2020, there were over 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States, making it the highest number of over-dose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period (CDC, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated rates of overdose across the country and worsened implications for the country’s healthcare workforce. Due to these circumstances, it is critical to utilize innovative approaches to build capacity within the substance use workforce to address this growing public health problem. The social work profession can be a crucial change agent when they receive the education, training, and experience necessary to adequately address substance use disorders in practice.

This webinar will highlight the successes from a recent learning collaborative, aimed to better prepare social workers for working with addiction and addiction-related issues to reduce the burden of overdose deaths and build workforce capacity. This initiative was led by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, in collaboration with the New York Community Trust and Council on Social Work Education.

Join us for our webinar, Building Capacity in the Workforce: A focus on Substance Use Education, on Tuesday, November 2, from 3:00-4:00pm ET to hear from the New York Community Trust project team and learn more in-depth about the learning collaborative.