HealthCity: BUSSW Community Works with Grayken Center to Improve Substance Use Care for Black Patients
To address the inequities Black patients with substance use disorder (SUD) face, Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction has spearheaded several funded initiatives featuring faculty and alumni from BU School of Social Work (BUSSW). A recent HealthCity article included Philip Reason (MSW’21, MPH’22) who co-facilitated one of the featured projects; Corinne Beaugard (PhD’23), a graduate researcher at the center for the last two years; and Prof. Christina Lee, a senior leadership team member who analyzed the study’s data, helped set up the study, and met, advised, and trained researchers in focus group practices.
“Part of what’s really great about this project is its collaborative nature,” says Beaugard. “It shows how people with different expertise and backgrounds, personally and professionally, have come together to work with the community to collectively improve addiction treatment for black patients.”
Excerpt from “How Can We Make Addiction Care More Appealing and Effective for Black Patients?” by Sandra Larson:
The death toll from drug overdoses, particularly opioid overdoses, continues to rise in the U.S. In recent years, the overdose death rate for Black people has increased more than that of any other racial and ethnic group. At the same time, research shows that Black patients are far less likely than white to be prescribed medication for opioid use disorder, a known and effective treatment.
These trends add new facets to an old problem: From higher arrest rates and harsher prison sentences for drug offenses to insufficient access to care, people of color — especially Black people — have long faced inequitable treatment around substance use disorder (SUD).
‘There are racial disparities and injustices everywhere that you look — in the risk factors for SUD, the consequences of SUD, access to treatment for SUD, and benefits of treatment for SUD,’ says Phillip Reason, MSW, MPH, co-facilitator of the grant-funded project ‘Embracing Anti-Racism in Addiction Treatment, Research and Policy: Engaging Black People with Lived Experience of SUDs.’ Reason also works as the multi-visit patient project manager in the Population Health Department at Boston Medical Center (BMC), working to reduce emergency department utilization among the highest-frequency visitors.”