Yale Medical School, The Hartford team up to better identify substance abuse in the workplace [Hartford Courant]

To help workers coping with substance abuse, The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Yale University School of Medicine are looking to retrain clinicians to better recognize the medical illness.

The financial services and insurance giant and Yale Program in Addiction Medicine, part of the School of Medicine, are developing a training program focused on addiction, pain management and stigma for medical providers who treat injured workers.

A national study on addiction stigma, done by The Hartford and Shatterproof, a nonprofit organization fighting addiction, found that health-care workers attached a high degree of stigma toward individuals with substance-use disorder. Nearly two-thirds said substance-use disorder is not a chronic medical illness.

“It’s unfortunate but not surprising,” said David Fiellin, a professor of medicine and public health at Yale, and director of the Program in Addiction Medicine.

The field of addiction medicine has evolved, expanding the understanding of biological processes, he said. In addition, younger clinicians who are part of what Fiellin called a “generational divide” have more personal experiences with friends and family members and recognize that “these are good individuals who somehow have developed a bad disease.”

Christopher Swift, chief executive officer of The Hartford. said in an interview that the company’s two largest product lines, workers comp and long-term disability, have helped point out trends that “obviously are a little alarming and concerning, particularly regarding the prescription use of opioids and the inherent addiction they create with long-term use.”

“We know from our decades of experience that front-line clinicians play a critical role in preventing substance misuse and fostering treatment,” he said.

Fiellin and Jeanette Tetrault, a professor of medicine at Yale, will develop training that will help clinicians identify and treat acute pain, chronic pain, substance misuse and substance- and opioid-use disorders among workers.

The workforce is an untapped resource for access, recognition and quality of treatment for substance-use disorders, Fiellin said. The project will help clinicians develop skills such as assessment and treatment of work injuries and pain-related conditions that limit an individual’s ability to work, he said.

One goal of the pilot program is to produce a national educational resource that helps workers return to active and productive lives, “without stigma or untreated addiction,” he said.

Attacking stigma associated with addiction is part of the project.

“These are common conditions that are not based on lack of will,” Fiellin said. “There’s a neurobiology and a biology that takes over, and we need to treat these like other chronic medical conditions.”

In the pilot’s first phase, which is underway, training modules and a collection of clinical resources, are being developed. In phase two, set for January to June 2022, the training will be delivered to a preliminary group of 50 to 100 medical professionals who treat workers with acute pain, living with chronic pain and a substance-use disorder.

In the final phase of the pilot, the training will be updated based on the medical providers’ feedback that’s anticipated next summer. The Hartford is committing $150,000 to the project.

Stephen Singer can be reached at [email protected].

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