Substance Use

Coffee Chat: Competency & Decision-Making

PowerPoint Slides(PDF) Part of the “Coffee Chat” series for clinicians, this session will explore issues related to competency and decision-making. Clinicians caring for people experiencing homelessness sometimes face challenging situations, including considering the role mental health and substance use play in a person’s ability to make decisions, and addressing the tension between wanting to “fix” […]

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Coffee Chat: Reproductive Health

Part of our new “Ethics Coffee Chats” series for clinicians, this discussion will explore ethical issues related to reproductive health. Clinicians often face challenging ethical situations when assisting people of reproductive age who are experiencing homelessness—from knowing which reproductive health issues to discuss with youth without homes to addressing the ethical considerations related to reproductive

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Medication-Assisted Treatment: Changes in Federal Policy Will Help Increase Access to Opioid Treatment in the HCH Community

Webinar Slides(PDF) The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) expanded buprenorphine prescribing rights to nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants, while changes in federal regulations increased patient limits. At the same time, many homeless health care providers have been adding MAT services into their primary care practice and finding both challenges and opportunities with

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Treating Opioid Addiction in Homeless Populations: Challenges and Opportunities Providing Medication Assisted Treatment (Buprenorphine)

Webinar Slides(PDF) Our nation is facing an opioid epidemic that has reached crisis levels; drug overdose deaths have surpassed car accidents and firearms as the leading cause of injury and death in the U.S. In 2014 47,000 people died of drug overdoses, more than any other year on record, and opiate overdoses accounted for more

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The SPOT: Boston’s New Harm Reduction Program for Opioid Users Forges New Ground

Webinar Slides(PDF) In response to the local overdose crisis in Boston, the Boston Health Care for The Homeless Program (BHCHP) recently opened the Supportive Place for Observation and Treatment (SPOT), which provides people with opioid use disorder a safe space where they are monitored during periods of sedation after taking substances. Participants are also offered

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Medication-Assisted Treatment: Buprenorphine in the HCH Community

Heroin and prescription drug overdoses have reached epidemic levels, spurred in part by the large number of opioids prescribed for pain. In 2012, 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids in the U.S., enough to supply every American adult with their own bottle of pills. An estimated 4.5 million people were non-medical users of prescription

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Hot Spotters in the HCH Setting: Managing Patients with Complex Comorbidities

Webinar Slides(PDF) This webinar will present findings from a review of the literature and field interviews with four health care for the homeless projects regarding their management of complex comorbidities including a highlight of practices from the HCH project at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Masschusetts. Managing complex comorbidities with patients who are homeless can be

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