Educational Activities Archives

Participants who engage in this activity learn to identify components of a neurobiological framework/explanatory model for patients with chronic pain and opioid use disorder, discuss complexities involved in differentiating opioid use disorder from chronic pain, and describe how to perform an opioid use disorder evaluation for a patient with chronic pain seen in primary care.

This activity focuses on the foundational components of Motivational Interviewing and how this approach fits into a client centered approach to care. Participants learn how to apply motivational interviewing skills within a pain management framework.

This activity reviews the body’s normal response to stress and also introduces two brief behavioral exercises to aid in stress reduction and present-focused awareness. Patient explanations for both exercises are provided, as are brief experiential exercises. Sample scripts for clinician use are also included. Finally, a synopsis of the evidence for these exercises is reviewed. In short, the two techniques have evidence for moderate benefit, sometimes short-term only, and no evidence for increased risk of harm. They benefit from being brief, easy to teach, portable, and skills-based (thus skills practice likely increases potential for benefit).

Participants will be introduced to the vocabulary of addiction and the root causes of addiction especially in the adolescent, as well as the epidemiology of opioid overdoses and deaths in the United States as a public health phenomenon, with particular attention paid to the decreasing rate of illicit opioid use in adolescents over the past decade. The learner will also, with this background, have reinforced the predicates of opioid misuse in adolescents and, through clinical examples, learn how to recognize possible misuse and address misuse in adolescents seen in a medical setting. Finally, safe prescribing principles will be introduced.

In this webinar, researchers from the Social Action Lab at the University of Pennsylvania will discuss a novel, virtual social-behavioral intervention, GROV (Grid for Reduction of Regional Vulnerability), which is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under the DP01 mechanism led by PI Dolores Albarracin. The presentation will showcase how the intervention seeks to foster effective social regulation of community challenges as a way of promoting HIV and HCV testing, preventing overdoses, seeking mental and physical health treatments, establishing social relationships, etc. The research team will delve into the intervention’s design and procedures and share preliminary results during the webinar, followed by a question-and-answer session for attendees.

The third part of this series will spotlight addiction psychiatrists, another pivotal role in the treatment of opioid use disorder. Explore their specialized skills, including psychological therapies, medication management, and medication-assisted treatment that are crucial in addressing the complexities of opioid use disorder. Join us to understand their role in the interdisciplinary care mosaic.