UH and St. Vincent to Improve Access to Addiction Care

CLEVELAND – University Hospitals announced today the award of a $2.89 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create, in collaboration with St. Vincent Charity Medical Center (SVCMC), theNE Ohio Center for Addiction Research, Prevention, and Education (“CARPE”) Collaborative. This grant, which will be provided over a period of five years, will expand and extend the Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in partnership with and alongside the long-standing SVCMC Addiction Medicine Fellowship. Funding will be used to increase the number of board-certified Addiction Psychiatrists and Addiction Medicine Physicians trained in Northeast Ohio.

NE Ohio has made improvement in reducing the loss of lives attributable to opioid use disorders since reaching peak levels in 2017. Collaboration among many stakeholders fueled this progress; however, overdose deaths recently spiked, underscoring the need to continue to press forward with meaningful solutions.

The CARPE Collaborative aims to improve quality of care for individuals with addictive disease (with and without mental health disorders); transform the addiction treatment workforce by targeting the needs of underserved communities; and expand telehealth services in rural counties in Northeast Ohio. The funding provided by the grant will more than double the Fellowship opportunities in Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine, greatly increasing the addiction treatment workforce in this region.

“UH and St. Vincent have collaborated since 1990 to train psychiatrists and primary care physicians in the compassionate and evidence-based care of patients and families with substance use disorders,” explained Christina M. Delos Reyes, MD, FASAM, Psychiatrist, UH Cleveland Medical Center and leader of UH’s system-wide strategy for addiction services. “The funding provided by this grant will dramatically increase the number of physicians being trained in Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine in Northeast Ohio, which will improve access to care for patients. This grant is designed as a workforce development program that also emphasizes expanding addiction care to rural areas and integrating addiction care into primary care offices.”

The CARPE Collaborative will be led by Dr. Delos Reyes and her team, in partnership with Theodore Parran, MD and Christopher Adelman, MD, directors of the accredited program at SVCMC.

“The CARPE Collaborative enables us to take the longstanding relationship between our two organizations to the next level,” said Theodore Parran, MD, FACP, FASAM, Co-Medical Director of Rosary Hall, SVCMC’s addiction medicine program. “This dovetails nicely with St. Vincent’s transformation of our Behavioral Health service line to provide an integrated health model that takes a person-centered approach to care, and expands our service continuum to better meet the needs of the complex population we serve. We will now be able to train doctors from multiple subspecialties such as psychiatry, internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, OB/GYN and emergency medicine to treat addiction. We believe this program will be a real game-changer because we will be able to provide a broader and richer training experience for both Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine Fellows.” The CARPE Collaborative project is supported by the Health Resources and Medicine Fellows.”

The CARPE Collaborative project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of an award totaling $2.89 million over five years ($415,000 in year one), which is to be awarded annually and is subject to funds available through federal appropriations. The contents of this announcement are those of University Hospitals and St. Vincent and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.