APA and ACOG: Screen pregnant women for substance use

In “Substance Use Disorders in Perinatal Women,” Kimberly Yonkers, M.D., gives a sobering presentation on the consequences of substance use in pregnant women, on the women themselves, their pregnancies and their offspring, in the perinatal period. Yonkers' presentation took place April 25 as part of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA's) virtual online annual meeting; the meeting itself, scheduled to be in Philadelphia, was canceled due to COVID‐19. Yonkers' presentation touched on social justice as well as medical issues.     

Levenson,former rehab CEO,on his conversion to harm reduction

Many people familiar with the addiction treatment field over the past few decades might be surprised to hear that Ben Levenson, the founder of 12‐Step‐based Origins Behavioral Healthcare in 2009, is no longer a believer in abstinence‐based treatment for everyone.     

NASADAD to NIDA: Connect research to practice

When the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) sought input on its five‐year plan, the people responsible for publicly funded prevention, treatment and recovery — state directors — called for returning to the days of communication between federal agencies like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and between NIDA researchers and the service delivery system. In an Aug. 7 letter to NIDA's strategic planning team, Robert I.L. Morrison, executive director of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD), noted that each state alcohol and drug agency has a critical role to play in NIDA initiatives. This role includes.     

Feds charge Florida addiction doctor with billing fraud

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice arrested Michael J. Ligotti, D.O., of Delray Beach, Florida, for billing Medicare and private insurance companies for $681 million in unnecessary urine tests. Ligotti owned and operated Whole Health, a private clinic, which offered addiction and other treatment programs, and he also was the “medical director” of more than 50 addiction treatment programs and sober homes.     

Sublocade improves abstinence and quality of life outcomes

Treatment with injectable subcutaneous buprenorphine (Sublocade) over a course of a year resulted in better abstinence and quality of life, according to a study by Walter Ling and colleagues published in the current issue of the Journal of Addiction Medicine.     

10 options for federal opioid changes: New paper from RAND

There have been many calls for federal changes to address the opioid epidemic, but one from Beau Kilmer, senior policy researcher and director of the Drug Policy Research Center at the RAND Corporation, released last week is a particularly interesting distillation that doesn't omit pros and cons for each strategy.     

Extending Bayesian back-calculation to estimate age and time specific HIV incidence

Lifetime Data Analysis - CD4-based multi-state back-calculation methods are key for monitoring the HIV epidemic, providing estimates of HIV incidence and diagnosis rates by disentangling their...     

SAMHSA guidelines for recovery housing emphasize MAT

If there's any question about the appropriateness of medication‐assisted treatment (MAT) using methadone and buprenorphine for recovery housing residents, it has been settled by the most recent report from the federal government: Don't ban it, and, furthermore, do it.