Addiction medicine curriculum has often been neglected in health care education. Very few medical schools have a curriculum that dedicates time specifically to addiction medicine. Implementing an elective or required addiction medicine curriculum during medical school can boost students’ confidence in their ability to screen, manage, and treat patients with substance use disorders. Consistent, early training and education in addiction medicine during undergraduate medical education can help identify students who can go on to become champions and future leaders who can serve as the next generation of educators in the field.
Michigan Collaborative Addiction Resources and Education System (MI CARES)
In 2018, through the utilization of $1.5 million in State Opioid Response funds, Dr. Cara Poland from MSU’s College of Human Medicine and collaborators from Wayne State University created Michigan Collaborative Addiction Resources and Education System (MI CARES). The program aims to reduce stigma around substance use disorder and treatment, knowing that education is a critical component of fighting the addiction crisis.
Building on support from Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, MI CARES has developed a series of asynchronous learning modules to create a robust addiction medicine curriculum. To date, the MI CARES program has produced a series of 32 modules for undergraduate and graduate medical education and is now available not only to physicians and students in Michigan but also around the country.
The success of MI CARES in addressing the addiction education learning gap among physicians, medical students, and residents led to its expansion to the field of social work. The aim of the social work arm of MI CARES is to increase the availability of addiction education to all collaborators in the team-based model approach to addiction treatment. The goal is to expand to other social science professions to meet their needs as well.