Are You a Family Planning or Substance Use Disorder Service Provider?

Integrating Care is Critical to Best Serve our Communities

Covid-19 has overextended many providers. At the same time, the heightened stress, loneliness, and anxiety faced by their patients exacerbates the ongoing opioid crisis. Addressing both challenges requires new tools and workflows.

To help, Altarum is offering free virtual cross training and ongoing technical assistance to equip providers with the skills to screen and refer their clients. This training will be scheduled at your convenience and will use fun, interactive activities, teach-backs, and role-playing to build on the knowledge and experience of participants, and enhance collaboration between the two organizations.

Because only about 50% of women and men with substance use disorders report using contraception and the number of pregnant women with opioid use disorder more than quadrupled in the past few years, our goal is to increase substance use disorder screenings and referrals in family planning clinics and increase family planning screening and referrals within substance use disorder services.

Participation Benefits

• Financial compensation for sites. Participating sites will receive a stipend of $1,500.
• Professional development. Participants will better understand the relationship between family planning and substance use disorder services and will engage more effectively with clients. Program participants may also have the opportunity to earn continuing education credit.
• Ongoing technical assistance.  Up to six months of individualized technical assistance, as well as opportunities for continued communication and collaboration between family planning and behavioral healthcare sites.
• Compelling data to leverage for future opportunities. Participants will receive economic analysis results, including costs saved through achieving improved client outcomes and avoiding costly societal impacts of SUDs, unplanned pregnancies, and STIs.
• Community engagement and service integration. Participants will be trained with other service providers in their community to foster relationships and better integrate services.

Participation Requirements

The program is available to any Title X funded family planning provider and any behavioral health provider that provides services or treatment for substance use disorder nationwide. Program expectations include:

• Staff attendance at 6–8 hours of virtual training.
• Provide data for all pre- and post-training evaluation measures. Altarum will provide technical assistance as needed to help participating organizations gather and submit data.
• Participating clinical sites should be able to commit 3–7 staff members (depending on practice size) to attend the training, representing as many of the following roles as possible:
  • Health Care/Direct Service Providers
  • Medical Program/Agency Director
  • Administrative/Front Desk Staff
  • Medical Assistant
  • Clinical Director
  • Case Manager
  • Recovery Support Services

How to Get Started 

If you have any questions, please reach out to Lena Marceno, Project Manager, at linkstudy@altarum.org.