By Anna Morgan-Barsamian, MPH, RN, PMP, Senior Manager, Training & Education, NaRCAD
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Tags: Primary Care, Opioid Safety, Evidence Based Medicine

Our team at NaRCAD has been working on an exciting new project developing harm reduction key messages for primary care clinicians in collaboration with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and consultants from Boston Medical Center.
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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines harm reduction as an approach that aims to prevent overdose and infectious disease transmission, improve physical and mental health, and offer options for accessing treatment and other health care services for people who use drugs. Various harm reduction approaches have been proven to prevent overdose and death, injury, infectious disease transmission, and substance misuse. For instance, there is nearly 30 years of research that has shown that syringe services programs decrease transmission of viral hepatitis, HIV, and other infections. 

There are several other harm reduction approaches beyond syringe service programs, including:
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• Peer support
• Naloxone
• Using drugs with another person
• Wound care kits
• Fentanyl strips
• Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD)
• Referrals for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)
• Medication lock boxes
• Safer sex kits to reduce infectious disease transmission

 
It’s critical that academic detailers continue to encourage primary care clinicians to discuss harm reduction with their patients and link them to services within their community. Academic detailers have the ability to empower clinicians to have difficult conversations with patients to reduce infections, overdose, and death. Our team developed the following key messages to support primary care clinicians in caring for patients who would benefit from harm reduction. These key messages are currently being piloted across the United States in a project funded by NACCHO.

Harm Reduction: Key Messages to Improve Outcomes for People Who Use Drugs

1. Assess factors that may contribute to risk of Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) for patients who use opioids.

2. Identify opportunities to reduce risk of harm using a patient-centered approach.

3. Offer Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) to patients identified as having OUD.

4. Connect patients with community harm reduction services and other services that meet identified needs.

These evidence-based key messages can help clinicians provide support to their patients and build strong and trusting relationships with those who need it most. Building trust between clinicians and patients allows patients to feel heard and be open to seeking additional treatment, ultimately leading to improved health outcomes.

Our team is looking forward to continuing to explore harm reduction and updating our key messages based on the results of the pilot through NACCHO.

If your program is interested in collaborating with our team on future harm reduction work, or any other clinical topic, please reach out to us at narcad@bmc.org.
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Want to learn more?
Stay tuned to learn about the results of the pilot and how clinicians responded to these key messages in the field. You can also join our discussion forum to interact with peers who are working on harm reduction!

By Anna Morgan-Barsamian, MPH, RN, PMP, Senior Manager, Training & Education, NaRCAD
 
An interview with José Peña Bravo, PhD, Health Educator, Florida Department of Health in Duval County.
 
Tags: Detailing Visits, Evidence-Based Medicine, Opioid Safety, Data

Anna: Hi, José! Thanks for joining us on our DETAILS blog today. Your journey that led you to the academic detailing community is unique – can you share that journey with us?

José: Yes! My background is not originally in public health. I’m a biomedical researcher by training, specifically preclinical research using animal models. My dissertation work was on understanding the neurophysiological changes and different brain regions involved in behaviors related to substance use.
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My intention was to stay in academia and start my own lab, but my plans changed during COVID-19 and the opportunity to work with the public health department in Duval County presented itself. It’s been a learning curve for me to switch my perspective from preclinical research to public health—it’s been an enjoyable journey so far!

Anna: I’m sure your biomedical research skills have a positive impact with clinicians during your detailing visits too, especially when clinicians want to discuss the neurobiology of substance use disorder. Speaking of visits, your detailing work is funded through CDC’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) grant, which seeks to prevent overdoses. Can you tell us about what the work for this grant looks like in Florida?

José: The OD2A project is a team effort across three CDC-funded jurisdictions in Florida. The health departments share that funding with various community organizations, and we all work toward linking patients with substance use disorder to treatment, mental health care, and care coordination services.

Our detailing team is closely connected to organizations and resources within our community, and we share these resources with clinicians during our detailing visits. We also have access to aggregate prescription data from our jurisdiction and are continuing to find ways to present and incorporate this data at our visits with clinicians. We share this data and other resources across our three jurisdictions.

Anna: We’ve found that many AD programs have been successful when they are closely connected to community resources. NaRCAD recently hosted a detailing training for OD2A recipients that you attended. What was it like to train with other jurisdictions working on the same project?

José: It was helpful to hear from other jurisdictions because they’ve all approached their AD work differently based on the gaps in care in their own communities. I was able to hear from AD programs in rural areas and the specific challenges that their patients face with lack of access to care (long travel times, stigma, etc.).
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I also enjoyed practicing my detailing skills in a space where I felt comfortable making mistakes. It’s valuable to try things out and see how they’ll go before going out in the field. I learned a lot at the training and am excited to try out some of my new skills at my next visit. ​

Anna: Hearing from other detailers who are doing this important work with you is so helpful as you continue to think about and grow your own program. What advice would you tell other detailers working on the OD2A project?

José: If you’re just starting out, reach out to community partners and get a sense of what patients with substance use disorder are experiencing and the challenges they’re facing before you start detailing clinicians. You’ll better be able to represent what is happening in the community and the resources that exist when you’ve done your research first!

Anna: That’s terrific advice – a key piece of being an effective detailer is understanding the patient experience for the clinical topic you’re detailing on. So, what’s next for your work and Duval County?

José: We’re currently working with our epidemiology team to collect population-level data and present it concisely. We want to be able to efficiently share this data with clinicians in a way that gets their attention and has them compare it to what they’re experiencing in their clinics to ensure an interactive dialogue during detailing visits.
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Anna: Using data to tell a story helps clinicians see the impact that they have in preventing overdoses and starts a conversation about organizations and resources that exist within communities for patients with substance use disorder. Thanks for sharing your OD2A work with us, José. We look forward to connecting with you and the other OD2A recipients at our conference in November! 

Have thoughts on our DETAILS Blog posts?
You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!​

Biography. José’s background is in Neuroscience preclinical research with over 10 years of experience in the field. His graduate work focused on the study of rodent models of substance abuse and the neurophysiological changes associated with controlled-substance experience. He has additional experience as an undergraduate and graduate level lecturer in different biomedical research topics. José recently transitioned to a position as health educator as part of the Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) program at the Florida Department of Health in Duval County. His role involves the implementation of the academic detailing program including outreach to clinics, integrating novel data and information to education materials, and keeping track of different metrics associated with outreach and AD sessions.

An interview with Nicole Green, BSP, RPh, ACPR, DPLA, Director of the Ambulatory Pharmacy Services Program at ThedaCare, a healthcare organization based in northeastern and central Wisconsin serving both rural and urban areas.

By: Aanchal Gupta, Program Coordinator, NaRCAD

Tags: Program Management, Detailing Visits, Opioid Safety

Aanchal: Hi Nicole, thank you so much for talking about your program with us today! You’re a pharmacy director at ThedaCare—tell us more about the academic detailing component of your programming.

Nicole: During the past four years working at ThedaCare, I’ve been studying ways in which pharmacists could serve as academic detailers to support opioid stewardship initiatives in order to positively influence prescribing. I was able to collaborate with other physician leaders as well as executive leadership who supported the program, gather data on opioid prescribing, and work on a proposal for academic detailing.
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We created our first formalized detailing project, called the Ambulatory Pharmacy Services Program, in January 2021. We had four detailers kick off our program and we’ve now doubled our team with a total of eight detailers that have all been trained by NaRCAD. Our detailers are ambulatory pharmacists who are embedded in ThedaCare’s family medicine and internal medicine clinics, serving as both medication experts and pharmacy consultants for patients and providers.

Aanchal: It’s incredible how quickly your program grew! Can you tell us more about the areas you’ve been focusing on for academic detailing?

Nicole: Opioid stewardship is our main focus area for our detailing initiative. Our detailers identify patients who are candidates for Naloxone and work with clinicians to provide education to patients and their family members. The detailers also assess patients who have been on opioids for a long time and determine if they still need to be on them or if tapering should be considered.

The second focus area is comprehensive medication management services for our self-insured population. This includes having our detailers identify chronic disease management gaps and partner with our state employees to optimize care for patients to reduce cost and readmissions.
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Our last focus area is to support our new heart failure clinic. Patients are referred to this clinic if they’ve been discharged from the hospital with heart failure or if they’ve been referred by a cardiologist. On initial visits, patients see a cardiology provider followed by an ambulatory pharmacist. Our role is to review the patient’s chart and provide recommendations to the team, as well as education to the patients. Our goals are to decrease readmissions and improve guideline-directed medical therapy.

Aanchal: Wow - your team’s impact is tremendous. You previously mentioned that you were able to double your detailing team in less than a year. What characteristics do you believe are needed to have a strong detailing team?

Nicole: Having in-depth knowledge about the clinical topic is extremely important. Detailing is also about building trust and strengthening the relationship with confidence. Detailers need to be confident, especially when they’re first starting out and are meeting with providers that they have yet to build a relationship with.
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Detailers also need to be prepared to respond confidently and in a way that will still engage the providers in an open conversation. Providers typically don't understand that ambulatory pharmacists’ jobs are to assist patients to meet medication-related goals. There have been assumptions about why we’re delivering this service or why we’re meeting with clinicians. Clinicians ask questions such as, “Is it because I’m being targeted?” or “Is it because of my prescribing practices?”

Aanchal: Agreed; at NaRCAD, we know that having both clinical expertise and confidence communicating is essential to detail successfully. We know what makes a successful detailer – now let’s talk about what qualities you believe make you successful as a leader.

Nicole: The first quality that comes to mind is passion. I lead with energy and show my team how exciting this work can be. I think that's important because previously we didn’t have pharmacists embedded in primary care and patients didn’t have an option to book an appointment with a pharmacist for consultation. Our pharmacists are delivering a service that was not there before. They need to promote themselves and make others aware of how they can help.

Also, I like to be a strong advocate for my team. I constantly raise my hand saying that we can help with different initiatives or that certain projects are right up our alley.

​Finally, I encourage my team to be persistent. We can't take the first “no” from a clinician as rejection. It might mean, “not now,” “I don't understand,” or “I haven't been exposed to this.” It doesn’t mean that they never want to have a visit with an academic detailer or will never change their prescribing behavior. ​

Aanchal: These are all core elements in building a strong team. Some situations can feel defeating and having a strong leader that has your back is so important. Lastly, what advice do you have for someone who is new to managing a team of detailers?

Nicole: Prepare your detailers for the field with the most up-to-date clinical content so that they can interact with clinicians confidently.

Also, provide your detailers with training opportunities and use resources like NaRCAD. If you have the capacity, take it one step further by adding practice role play sessions among peers and allow new detailers to observe other detailers in the field. ​​​When training, help the detailers step out of their comfort zone within a group of people that they know before they step out of their comfort zone with a stranger.

Aanchal: Yes, having support and receiving feedback from peers is an important element of building a strong team. Thank you so much for sharing your perspectives with us, Nicole! We look forward to continuing to see your team grow and feature your work at our upcoming conference!  

Have thoughts on our DETAILS Blog posts?
You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!​

BIOGRAPHY: Nicole Green completed her pharmacy education at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada followed by a hospital residency. She practiced for over a decade as a Clinical Coordinator primarily in the area of cardiology. She has completed year-long learnings through the AIMM (Alliance for Integrate Medication Management) collaborative as well as the ASHP PLA (Pharmacy Leadership Academy). She is the Director of Ambulatory Pharmacy with ThedaCare. She leads the comprehensive strategic plan to embed pharmacists within family and internal medicine clinics as providers and vital members of the primary care clinical team.  She has served as an Executive panelist with GTMRx (Get the Medications Right) and the Institute for Advancing Health Value.

Her program utilizes Academic Detailing as a means of building professional relationships, establishing credibility and influencing prescribing improvements. Much of her team’s work is related to Quality improvement initiatives in medication stewardship and safety as well as maximal performance in Pharmacy related ACO measures.

Nicole has worked with the ThedaCare cardiology team to build a collaborative Heart Failure Clinic where patients see both a cardiology provider and am ambulatory pharmacist.    

 
By Anna Morgan-Barsamian, MPH, RN, PMP, Senior Manager, Training & Education, NaRCAD
 
An interview with Adrienne Butterwick, MPH, CHES, Senior Improvement Advisor and Academic Detailing Project Manager, Comagine Health. Comagine Health is a national, nonprofit, health care consulting firm that works collaboratively with patients, providers, payers and other stakeholders to reimagine, redesign and implement sustainable improvements in the health care system.

Tags: Detailing Visits, Evidence Based, Substance Use, Opioid Safety

Anna: Hi Adrienne! We recently saw you present on a panel where you spoke about your academic detailing project with dentists on opioid safety. Can you tell us a little more about how your team got started with this work?

Adrienne: In 2018, the CDC released funds to states through the Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) grant and the state of Utah selected academic detailing as one of the interventions they wanted to use. AD is one of the many different modalities that we use within my organization to reach clinicians to educate them and have an impact on the kind of care they provide.
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The state began looking at specific regions and populations to target after we received the funding. Utah is unique in that it has a high number of adolescents undergoing surgery for wisdom teeth removal, which is one of the most common instances where controlled substances are prescribed.

A first prescription can be a huge turning point to potentially becoming addicted to a substance, especially at a young age. That’s when we decided to put together a team of two detailers to detail dentists. I was lucky enough to attend each detailing visit and collect data through pre- and post-surveys and answer any administrative questions that came up. ​

Anna: A detailer who can build empathy with clinicians and who has personal experience with a challenging topic is an important asset to have in a detailing program. What obstacles did you face as your team implemented this project?

Adrienne: Connecting with dental offices, in general, was tough. We first started by working with dental associations to get relationships in place. We submitted newsletter articles, attended meetings, presented at the regional conference, and sent our program’s information via their listservs.

We also Googled practices and found ones that had more than one dentist working in the office at a time. We’d cold call those offices and say, “It looks like you have a big operation – is there a way we could bring training in for your team for continuing education credits?”

Before leaving the visits, we’d ask the dentists for referrals to other clinicians and leave flyers behind. Relationships grew organically over time.

Anna: It sounds like the project began to build on itself fairly quickly. Did your team experience any barriers from the dentists during the detailing visits?

Adrienne: We had a lot of dentists who thought the opioid crisis wasn’t relevant to their practice and we knew that we had to find ways to tie it into their profession. Fortunately, dentists have historically been involved in public health movements because they hold a different type of relationship with patients that is closer than a typical relationship with a primary care provider. They see patients more frequently and can detect small changes in health quickly.

The dental profession was incredibly important in the tobacco cessation movement in the 1990s. They were instrumental in getting individuals to reduce or completely stop using tobacco. Dentists are also starting to be trained in domestic violence and human trafficking.
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For the dentists who were hesitant about the relevance of our detailing visits, we would say, “You have this amazing relationship with patients that we don’t see in other parts of healthcare—here’s how you can make a huge difference!” or “I can understand how there would be a lot of fear to step out of your comfort zone; we have a lot of resources and materials to support you.” ​

Anna: Dentists truly have a unique relationship with patients that can be used to promote countless public health initiatives. Can you think of a time your team was able to empower a dentist to change behavior and encourage them to see their relevance in combatting the opioid crisis?

Adrienne: There was a dental group in a rural part of the state that had one dentist and a big support staff. We came in for a detailing visit and had a conversation with the entire office. 

After the meeting, one of the dental assistants pulled me aside and told me that a patient who had recently completed substance use rehab had visited the office in need of a procedure that would warrant prescribing an opioid. No one in the office knew what to do for pain control and they were all unsure how to approach the patient given his history. She said that because we came, she felt like she now knew how to have a conversation with him about the procedure and his safer, alternative options for pain management.

The dentist also shared that prior to our visit, he often didn’t know how to handle conversations about pain management and opioids and wasn’t sure if it was his job to do so. After our visit, he said he felt comfortable and confident doing this, and shared an anecdote of being able to create a safe space for an ongoing conversation with a recent patient.

Anna: It seems like your team has had such an impact by using one of the core elements of detailing – building relationships through empathy, validation, and support. Can you share some encouragement for readers who are considering having these conversations with dentists?

Adrienne: Be flexible and don’t come in with your own agenda – be sure to let the dentists drive the conversation and let them teach you along the way. It can be a rewarding yet challenging experience – don’t forget to celebrate the small wins on your journey!
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Anna: Thanks for sharing this innovative approach to detailing, Adrienne! We’re looking forward to hearing about your continued impact with the dental community and beyond.

Have thoughts on our DETAILS Blog posts?
You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!
 ​

Biography. Ms. Butterwick is a Senior Improvement Advisor at Comagine Health. She is currently working on quality improvement efforts directed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to improve quality of care for residents living in post-acute and long term care as well as assisted living and home health. She's also working on an initiative to increase advance care practices in those settings.

In addition, through a subcontract with the Utah Department of Health, Ms. Butterwick currently provides educational support for opioid prescribing to family medicine and dental providers. Her work with this contract has earned national recognition and has been presented at the RX Drug and Heroin Abuse Summit in April 2020 and the American Public Health Association’s annual conference in October 2020. She is currently also collaborating with faculty from the University of Utah regarding telehealth and advance care planning initiatives through the Utah Geriatric Education Consortium and Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Programs.

She completed her Bachelors of Science degree in Behavioral Science and Health at the University of Utah in 2007 and her Master's in Public Health at Westminster College in 2014. She has also earned recognition as a Certified Healthcare Education Specialist (CHES).
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In her 15 years of public health project management she has also worked in rural health research, provider education programs and care management. She has a strong passion for quality improvement and public health. 

An interview with Parveen Ghani, MBBS, MPH, MS, Health Program Specialist III, Division of Professional Licensing, State of Utah.

by Anna Morgan-Barsamian, MPH, RN, PMP, Senior Manager, Training & Education, NaRCAD

Tags: Opioid Safety, Evidence Based, Training

Anna: Hi Parveen! You’re one of our training alumni who’s built a strong program over the past few years. We’re thrilled to be able to catch up with you! Can you tell us about yourself?

Parveen: I’m trained as a physician and have always wanted to work in public health. It was important to me to be able to make a difference in people’s lives.

I currently work in the Division of Professional Licensing at the Department of Commerce in Utah. I've been working as an academic detailer since my NaRCAD training a few years ago.

Anna: It sounds like the rest is history! Are there other detailers on your team who are helping you meet your program goals?
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Parveen: I’m a full-time detailer for our AD program along with my colleague, Marie Frankos. We work with many of the same prescribers over multiple detailing visits and build strong connections with them. 

Anna: Can you talk to us about your detailing work in overdose prevention?

Parveen: Opioid overdose in the State of Utah is exceptionally high. We’re currently working with prescribers on the safe prescribing of opioids. Our state’s prescription drug monitoring program is called the Controlled Substance Database Program (CSD). The CSD includes both a Patient Dashboard and Prescriber Dashboard.

The Patient Dashboard is an electronic clinical decision-making tool that grants prescribers access to information regarding controlled substance prescriptions for individual patients. It contains records of a patient’s poisoning or overdose and any violations associated with a controlled substance. The Prescriber Dashboard, on the other hand, tracks each clinician's prescribing patterns and CSD utilization behavior.
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Anna: We’ve seen a lot of success with detailing programs who work with clinicians to navigate their state’s prescription drug monitoring program, like your CSD. Does your state require prescribers to look at this database?

Parveen: Yes. According to the Utah Controlled Substances Act,

(a) A prescriber shall check the database for information about a patient before the first time the prescriber gives a prescription to a patient for a Schedule II opioid or a Schedule III opioid.

(b) If a prescriber is repeatedly prescribing a Schedule II opioid or Schedule III opioid to a patient, the prescriber shall periodically review information about the patient in:

(i) the database; or (ii) other similar records of controlled substances the patient has filled.

Anna: It’s so important to support prescribers in using a database like this, especially when there are mandates in place. What is the overall goal of your AD program?

Parveen: The goal of our AD program is to provide recommendations to prescribers regarding best practices in the utilization of the CSD per the Controlled Substance Database Act. This includes identifying individual prescriber’s prescribing and dispensing patterns of controlled substances, identifying prescribers who are prescribing in an unprofessional or unlawful manner, and identifying polypharmacy, doctor shopping, poisoning, or overdoses.
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Anna: It sounds like your AD program is working hard to support clinicians in CSD utilization. What kind of resources have you developed for clinicians that work towards your program’s overall goal, and how do you make these materials accessible?

Parveen: We’ve created a toolkit that acts as a guide to help clinicians utilize the database and different resources within the community. During our in-person visits, we provide hard copies of materials that include screenshots of how to create a CSD account, reset CSD account passwords, and navigate the dashboards within the CSD. During our virtual AD sessions, we send these materials electronically. Additionally, we provide our contact information for further technical assistance, including our personal phone number, work phone number, and email address. 

We've made our toolkit available on our website along with prescriber FAQs. We’re continuing to update our website with helpful materials for clinicians.

Anna: Making resources like this so accessible is key. Can you share some reflections on visits where you felt like you made a difference or were able to offer technical assistance?
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Parveen: I love helping prescribers, even if it is something as simple as walking them through the log-in process or resetting a password. I’ve had clinicians bring their entire medical team in for a detailing visit so that I can show everyone in the office how to use the database.
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One prescriber even told me after a visit that they would be sharing my name with a colleague and that I should expect a call to schedule a detailing visit. It’s lovely to get these types of referrals from the clinicians.

Anna: Prescribers feeling thankful and impressed with your 1:1 support enough to refer you to their colleagues is a huge success! Let’s wrap up with one more question - what’s one tip you’d give to another academic detailer?

Parveen: Find ways to collaborate. We can’t do it alone! Start working together with other programs and share information, especially community resources. We can really make a difference if we work together.
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Anna: I couldn’t agree more. Making community connections and sharing information allows for great success in accomplishing goals for both small and large initiatives. Our AD community will be able to glean a lot from your program’s successes, and we look forward to sharing more of your team’s expertise in the future.

Have thoughts on our DETAILS Blog posts?
You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!

An interview with Carolyn Wilson, a Senior Health Program Coordinator at Ledge Light Health
District. Ledge Light Health District is located in New London, Connecticut and is the regional health district serving the southern part of New London County.

by Anna Morgan-Barsamian, MPH, RN, PMP, Senior Manager, Training & Education, NaRCAD

Tags: Opioid Safety, Evidence Based Medicine, Substance Use

Anna: Carolyn, we’re thrilled to feature you on our DETAILS blog! I know you wear many hats – can you tell us about your current job role?

Carolyn: I’m a health educator working within primary prevention, an academic detailer, and the host of our health district’s television program called Healthwatch. Healthwatch covers topics like mental health, physical health, disaster preparedness, general public health, COVID-19, environmental health, and disease prevention. I’ve been with Ledge Light Health District for 11 years.

Anna: It seems like improving patient and community health outcomes is a common thread across all your roles. What primary prevention work or related projects complement your AD work?

Carolyn: Depending on what topic I'm detailing on, I lean into my primary prevention work or the harm reduction work that my colleagues are working on.
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One of the larger initiatives I often share with clinicians during detailing visits is the Naloxone and Overdose Response App (NORA) project. The Department of Public Health developed a web-based application that can be downloaded directly to your phone. It has information about preventing, treating, and reporting opioid overdose. The app can be used by both folks in the community and clinicians. I also speak to clinicians about proper medication storage and disposal while promoting our “Take it To The Box” Initiative. ​

Carolyn: I detail a lot of advanced practice nurses (APRNs) and also work with them on some of my primary prevention projects. The overlap in projects helps me build strong relationships with these clinicians. I sometimes work with school-based health centers as part of my prevention work, and these health centers are typically run by APRNs. These centers act as an access point to care for many students and families. It’s essentially a primary care clinic right in the school.

The Child and Family Agency oversees the school-based health centers in southeastern Connecticut and reached out to me after a horrific event in a Connecticut middle school. A few months ago, a 12-year-old got access to fentanyl and brought it to school. He overdosed and passed away a few days later at the hospital.
 
We haven’t seen many overdoses in schools, but after this happened, a lot of schools started looking at their policies and school-based health centers wanted to have naloxone on hand. The medical director of the Child and Family Agency advocated for a policy that required all school-based health centers to have naloxone and to be trained in administering it.
 
Anna: What a devastating story. Have the school-based health centers been able to put these types of new policies into place?

Carolyn: When one of the clinicians from the Child and Family Agency reached out to me, she said, “Carolyn, I know you do this kind of work. You trained me in naloxone not too long ago during an academic detailing visit. I’d like to have a naloxone training for my nurse practitioners in the school-based health centers. I want naloxone available in all of our clinics.”
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This type of request would typically be delegated to somebody else in our department, but because of the relationships I had built through academic detailing, I was asked to provide the training, and I did. As a result, the school-based health centers now all have access to naloxone and the clinicians know how to administer it.  ​

Biography. Carolyn Wilson is a health educator and prevention specialist serving as a program coordinator at Ledge Light Health District in New London CT for 11 years. Carolyn studied public health and health education at New York Medical College. Keenly interested in health promotion and behavioral science, Carolyn enjoys bringing her passions and talents to both primary prevention and academic detailing work. Carolyn has been serving as an academic detailer for over 2 years and enjoys speaking with clinicians about strategies to prevent opioid related deaths. Carolyn also manages the Groton Alliance for Substance abuse Prevention @Groton_Prevents. In her spare time, Carolyn enjoys serving on the Board of Directors for the CT Association of Prevention Professionals and Fiddleheads Food Cooperative. To connect with Carolyn, find her on LinkedIn.

Aanchal Gupta,  NaRCAD Program Coordinator

Tags: Conference, Detailing Visits, Stigma, ​E Detailing, ​Opioid Safety
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​Take a peek at the NaRCAD2021 conference materials on our Conference Hub.

Overview: Mary Moody joins us from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Pharmacy to discuss the passing of an 2019 act providing AD to Medicaid prescribers in Illinois state, and how AD programs with similar legislative aspirations can follow in UIC's footsteps in securing support and funding for their work. 

Written by: Winnie Ho, Program Coordinator

Tags: CME, COVID-19, Health Policy, Opioid Safety, Program Management

Winnie: We’re very excited to have the opportunity to discuss with you regarding the efforts behind the passing of legislation in Illinois that helped cement the provision of AD services to Medicaid prescribers across the state! But before we get deeper into that, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your AD-related work?

Mary: I’m an Associate Dean for Professional and Governmental Affairs at the UIC College of Pharmacy, in addition to a Clinical Associate Professor. I started in Drug Information and for years, was managing our Drug Information Center which supports healthcare professionals around the country.

We’ve been working with the state for some time now, supporting the Medicaid prescriber population with the prior approval process. Within that timeframe, we started to look into AD to get a better understanding of how we could implement this for our providers.

​W: That’s a background that certainly lends itself to promoting AD. Can you walk us through what this legislative act details?

M: The bill outlines the development of a program to provide AD to Medicaid prescribing physicians. The bill also includes two specific components – one of which was an agreement to provide free CME which is available on our website, and the second of which was establishing a toll-free drug information phone number and e-mail for providers to reach out to us after their visit. We have trained drug information specialists who can answer any questions they have about medications.
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W: It’s important that this act received approval and support from the Illinois General Assembly. Can you talk to us about how this bill came to the floor and how it came to pass?

M: One of our legislators – Representative Theresa Mah – had attended the 2018 National Conference of State Legislators, which is an organization that acts as a percolator for new ideas about new laws. There, she learned about AD as there have been similar legislative acts established in other states, such as New York. She became really interested in bringing something similar to Illinois.
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In my role with Professional and Governmental Affairs, my responsibility is to keep track of proposed bills that are in the hopper, and when I saw that this bill was coming up, I was like wait, this is perfect! I set up a meeting with the representative to describe the vision and plans we had at UIC College of Pharmacy.

At this point, UIC had completed a pilot with AMITA Health to look at the benefits of AD in opioid prescribing through a CDC grant. Because of this prior experience, we were recommended to the state as a partner for this initiative.
​ Eventually, Dr. Todd Lee and I were invited to present in front of the state House and Senate committees where we introduced AD and answered any questions the representatives had. It was ultimately passed through House and Senate unanimously. I felt pretty great about that.

W: I’m glad to hear that the legislators really prioritized this. For the world of AD, this is a major win, especially as other AD programs may be interested in replicating your success on the legislative floor.

M: The legislative route is incredibly useful because it helps give me a higher level of comfort knowing that my budgeting for our AD work is likely to come on an annual basis.
​
W: I’m curious about how you were able to introduce AD to a brand new audience and persuade all of them that this work was something they ought to prioritize.

M: Since there have been several places that have established the legislation including New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Washington D.C, we were able to establish that there was precedent and could show them previous models. We were able to demonstrate how this would benefit Illinois, especially in reaching our targets of improving prescribing, reducing emergency room visits, and reducing hospitalizations for our chronically ill.
​
We discussed how there were a large number of individuals in our state who were Medicaid recipients that suffer from multiple chronic conditions, and that it was difficult for our prescribers to stay up to date with so much information coming at them. We wanted to provide the best evidence-based, non-biased information.

W: Your program kicked-off your work by focusing on the opioid overdose crisis. How was this chosen as a starting point?

M: It’s a public health crisis that is an absolute priority in Illinois. UIC has been working on research in academic detailing and the impact on opioid prescribing. We could match our pitch for AD to this current issue, it helped our presentation to the committees a lot.
​
W: When it comes to legislation, sometimes it can require many things to align. In this case, we’re trying to align healthcare interests, research, and the policy decision-making process. There’s always a lot of competing interests and AD is certainly not the only tool in the toolkit towards improving patient outcomes.

M: For anyone looking to intertwine AD with their state legislative process, you need to understand what your state’s priorities are. You can start by looking at state plans and guidelines for major health issues, just like the opioid crisis. No one is against making these health issues better for everyone, but you may need to do more research to understand where your program fits in and more importantly, who the movers and shakers in your governance are.

W: Right, these connections are critical to building support.
​
M: One of the things that can be frustrating is not knowing where to start. You can start by talking with local universities, your state and local public health officials. There’s state pharmacy and physician organizations who may have more experience with the legislative process. Look at where your opportunities to ask for help are. Ask people for their input. You don’t have to do this all on your own.

W: Is there anything else that’s useful to prepare before choosing the legislative route?

M: Having done a pilot makes a huge difference, because it shows that it can work in some part of your state. It shows that you know what might work and what won’t work. It can be hard to get a pilot done without a lot of funding, but sometimes you’ve got to use a little sweat equity, bite the bullet, and just do it.
It doesn’t have to be large. You can work with a local health department to identify physicians that they have good relationships with already, or a county medical society. Having data ready is really important.
​
W: All of this is valuable insight, thank you Mary! Although COVID-19 has interrupted some of these AD plans, what is your hope for what passing this legislation will mean for AD in Illinois?

M: Our current legislation specifically mentions supporting Medicaid providers. The goal is to expand it to all prescribers across Illinois. COVID-19 has also taught us a lot, and changed a lot of opinions on telehealth. I think as people become more comfortable with this platform, it will change how we approach AD.

We’re also looking at expanding beyond physician prescribers to include Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. It’s harder to get access to them. It’s an uphill battle to get names and contact information, and to know who the right providers are. But it’s important because NPs and PAs account for a large portion of prescribers for this patient population.
​
W: I think we’ll definitely see a ripple effect, and hopefully see AD take hold more broadly.

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You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!

Winnie: Liesa, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today about your experiences at the helm of ONE Tennessee through the past year. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and the AD-related work that you do?

Liesa: As the Executive Director of ONE Tennessee, I have overall responsibilities that include strategic planning, funding, communication, and staffing in addition to coordinating our AD program. I’m responsible for recruiting, training, and supporting our detailers to be as effective as possible. Our mission is to combat opioid misuse and overdose, and AD is just one of many projects and strategies we have to do that.
​
W: You certainly wear many hats in your leadership role! Can you tell us about the experiences that have shaped how you approach leadership?

​L: There were a very diverse set of experiences that influence how I’ve learned to lead. It’s also important to recognize that leadership comes in all forms. I was a foreign language teacher for 10 years, I had to learn the many different ways of communicating information to students from young teens to older adults. You learn to consider the way you present your information to help get all of your students to their goals.

I was also a director of a non-profit and managed volunteers. Just like my students, you quickly learn that people have many different motivations. A good leader knows how to cater to those motivations and learns how to maximize the team they’re working with. It’s also important to always remember to express gratitude towards your team, and as often as possible, remind them of the impact that they’re making.

W: You’ve discussed a lot of the soft skills and characteristics that good leaders have. What about some of the technical abilities that helped you be successful at managing an AD program?

L: Before coming to ONE Tennessee, I worked at both the federal and state-level in healthcare-related consulting work. It gave me exposure to federal and state-level funding procedures, as well as the decision-making process that goes on behind the scenes. You also learn about the regulations and guidelines that AD helps to keep clinicians aware of.

W: It sounds like you’ve had a fantastic journey on your way to the position that you have now in leading an AD initiative. Can you tell us a little bit more about the different community organizations that support ONE Tennessee’s AD work?

L: We have support from multiple organizations including the Tennessee Pharmacists Association, the Tennessee Hospital Association, and the Tennessee Primary Care Association. They’ve helped us recruit clinicians to serve as detailers and to participate in detailing sessions. We also have support from the East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health and the Tennessee Department of Health supporting our data collection and program evaluation. We are thankful to other provider organizations including local community pharmacists and clinicians at Alliance Healthcare Services to assist us in development and distribution of materials

W: That’s quite a dynamic bunch! At the intersection of many different groups in the community all focused on preventing opioid-related overdose, how do you keep all these different stakeholders on the same page?

L: Even when you speak the same common language, not everything is always communicated and understood as intended. I work with a talented team from diverse career backgrounds, including finance, legal, communications, and policy professionals. They don’t all speak the same exact “language” because of their professional backgrounds.

The role I often play in group meetings is that of a facilitator. I'm comfortable asking the so-called “dumb questions” or constantly asking for explanations. As a leader, it’s my job to make sure there is clear understanding among the folks in the room who don’t work in that field. It’s important as a leader to not only communicate well, but to also make sure everyone on your team is communicating well enough so that everyone can understand and also be understood.

W: Intentional level setting is a hallmark of effective leadership and communication. It allows meetings and decisions to be productive, and it ensures that everyone’s goals are aligned. Otherwise, important details may get left behind or not fully developed.

L: Exactly. It’s also important to know that with your team, you’re never alone. You don’t need to know everything to be a leader, but you need to surround yourself with people who can collectively make decisions based on good information. Surround yourself with people who know more than you do, and listen to them.

W: You picked up this role in the middle of a pandemic and with your leadership, we were able to launch our first virtual training pilot with ONE Tennessee for about two dozen detailers. It was a huge undertaking! What would your advice be for someone who’s looking to tackle big projects in their role as the leader of an AD organization?

L: I would say first and foremost – the determination to fulfill our commitments was important to me. I knew what was in our contractual agreement with our funders, and didn’t want to start off our organization with a fail in this category! Secondly, create a timeline with the concrete things that need to be finished and the resources you need to help you monitor progress along the way.

Finally, in the face of making new things happen – it can be daunting when there’s a big mission to accomplish. When there’s nothing on the drawing board yet, a leader is someone who volunteers to put up the first “strawman” plan. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it gives everyone something to build off of; it’s always better to start with something, like the first brick in the foundation.

W: We’ve talked a lot about how to bring a community together to support an AD intervention. Why is community involvement important to the success of an AD intervention?

​L: Well, whether you’re talking about opioids or HIV or chronic illnesses, the reality is that no one individual or organization within a community can solve a public health problem alone. Even though AD is mostly about the relationship between the detailer and the clinicians they work with, it’s informed by many other people who care about improving health outcomes. In short, the program would not be able to operate without the leadership and support of these partners! 
 
In a state as large as Tennessee, with such wide differences among rural and urban, from the Appalachian region to the Mississippi Delta, racially diverse but largely homogeneous in some places, it is important that collaboration occur at local levels as well as at state levels—both among clinical colleagues in the same community who care for the same patients, and also with support from state-level organizations who can leverage resources that may not be available in the local community.  While individuals and organizations may not agree on all points, it is usually possible to find at least one shared goal that can be worked on together. As an organization, we strive to identify and then mobilize to address those common goals. There are great things ahead for us all if we continue to work together.

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You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!

In her current role as Executive Director of ONE Tennessee, Liesa draws upon her experience as an educator, a non-profit administrator, a state-level director of community health programs and a consultant to state and federal officials, as she works to advance the organization's mission to combat the opioid epidemic through collaboration and sharing of information among health professionals and communities in Tennessee.  In her professional roles at Kingsport Tomorrow, CareSpark, Deloitte Consulting and the Tennessee Department of Health, Liesa has helped to develop and implement a broad range of collaborative projects at local, regional, state and national levels to improve community health, broadband access, education and literacy, employment opportunities, cultural arts exchanges, global trade, environmental protection, neighborhood revitalization, youth development and civic leadership.  Her skills in strategic planning, resource development, mentoring and community organizing have been recognized with awards, including being named a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International, a Health Care Hero by the Business Journal of Tri-Cities, and the Commissioner's Award of Excellence from the Tennessee Department of Health.
 
Liesa received her B.A. in French from King University in Bristol, Tennessee and her M.A. from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.  She also holds a Certificate of University Studies from the Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon, France, and is certified as a Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute.  Liesa is a native of Glade Spring, Virginia, where she is a seventh-generation resident on her family's farm, and enjoys spending time with her three sons and their families, as well as quilting, reading, and traveling.

Winnie: Hi Tara! It’s been a crazy year so far, hasn’t it? We want to check in with you and the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) team about your experiences in navigating the pandemic. Can you tell us a little more about yourself and your role in the ADVANCE academic detailing team?

Tara: I was hired about 7 months ago as the research coordinator, and it’s been one heck of a 7-month run. The majority of my work is focused on implementation, so I do all the scheduling and outreach to hospitals to talk to providers. I develop and establish relationships with office managers and providers, and I assign detailers to visits.

W: Our team at NaRCAD has been lucky to have worked with the UIC and ADVANCE team for a while through our trainings and your presentations at our conferences and our webinar series, and we’re excited about the research intervention that had been planned. Can you tell us a little bit more about the mission?
​
T: Our intervention is a CDC-sponsored, three pronged approach that’s built off a pilot program that we started in 2018 for Chicago-land providers. We have a team of about 30 detailers who are now trying to cover as much of the state as possible. We wanted to follow-up with providers to get a sense of whether or not the ‘dosage’ of AD made a difference, but we also wanted to expand the providers we worked with, and to introduce updated topics like the new features of the Illinois PMP or opioid alternatives. The third prong is creating a toolkit to give programs a blueprint and resources of what was effective for us. We would love to make the “how to” of AD more accessible to other groups.

W: Compared to other programs, you have quite a large and robust team at UIC. It must have been difficult for the pandemic to hit right in the middle getting your program launched.

T: It really impacted our recruitment as we had called providers from the end of January through early March 2020. There are a lot of things going on right now. Even a small ask, such as 15 minutes of their day, can feel like a big ask for providers.

W: Right, and interventions are very carefully laid out and planned ahead of time. COVID-19 has disrupted everything – especially those on the frontlines who are both detailing and being detailed. Can you tell us a little bit more about how else the impact on your original plans for the intervention?

T: We had been so focused on ramping up that by the time we hit mid-March, we had many people on deck reaching out to providers. We started hearing “No, we can’t do this right now” or “this is a really bad time” often.
​
Once the stay-at-home order came through, we stopped contacting offices for about 2 months. We had to sort out so many protocols and even our IRB to make amends for virtual visits. What we’ve found since we’ve resumed virtual visits in May is that there’s a lot of variability – some offices have capacity because they aren’t seeing many patients, while others have providers that have been transferred to hospitals and have no idea when they’ll be available. We’re also talking about layoffs and burn-out and low morale.

W: There are many of considerations on how best to proceed safely right now. One is looking at the impact on the critical work you’ve done on opioid safety. Unfortunately, the pandemic has only exacerbated the overdose epidemic. What progress has been made on your opioid initiative?

T: One of the ways our team has shifted has been moving to virtual visits. We knew that these would have its own difficulties, such as concerns about “no-shows”. But our team is relatively tech-savvy, and now my job is making sure they’re all familiar with how to troubleshoot the technological pieces of virtual visits. 

​There are a lot of tech issues that can interrupt a visit. So we do mock detailing and have the detailers practice with each other, where we introduce certain needs and obstacles, maybe even a tech problem for instance, we role play a provider not turning on the webcam, or not being able to see your screen. Practice to strengthen adaptability and resilience become important in ensuring the detailers are prepared.

W: There’s definitely no time like right now to test detailing skill and ability to think on your feet! As a research coordinator, what do you think you’ve learned in the past few months?

T: How to be flexible! There are all sorts of external pressures right now to keep our project on track, but the most important part is keeping the human aspect in check. Having some insight and empathy for providers is important to understand what they’re going through. We can get bogged down into the guide posts, the bench posts, or the numbers – but this era reminds us that it’s all about empathy.
​
​W: At the end of the day, we want better for our patients, for our communities, and for health outcomes everywhere, right?

T: Absolutely!

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You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!

An interview with Ramona Shayegani, PharmD, Program Lead, Academic Detailing Service, Veterans Affairs Southern Nevada Healthcare System

by Kristina Stefanini, NaRCAD Project Manager

Tags: E-Detailing, International, Materials Development, Opioid Safety, Substance Use, Rural AD Programs

Kristina: Programs are transitioning their academic detailing (AD) efforts to e-Detailing or virtual detailing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of your role at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Academic Detailing Service, you’ve completed e-Detailing visits, which you presented on at the NaRCAD 2019 conference. I wanted to interview you today, Ramona, to learn more about how you transitioned to e-Detailing. First, how did your program decide to do e-Detailing?
​
Ramona: Thanks for interviewing me! We heard about an e-Detailing pilot project from our national office and we were excited to participate as our region is spread out and rural, covering Nevada, northern California, Hawaii, and Manilla, Philippines. We felt this would be an excellent setting in which to incorporate video calls into our communication with clinicians. As a result, e-Detailing has allowed us to reach our full potential as a service.

Kristina: Amplifying a program’s impact and reach through e-Detailing is something many other programs want to experience. Have providers been receptive to e-Detailing visits given the current COVID-19 pandemic?

Ramona: I think it varies by site, but for the most part, providers are very eager to learn about the VHA’s telehealth program. Initially, when we started e-Detailing, we launched a campaign to encourage clinicians to complete telehealth visits with patients. Now providers remember our names, and they reach out about setting up telehealth meetings with their patients and figuring out how to conduct video calls. It’s very rare for providers to reach out to academic detailers for help. We usually have to initiate outreach requests.
​
Kristina: That’s terrific that clinicians are the ones reaching out for the service. When you’re getting ready for an e-Detailing visit, do you prepare the same way as you would for an in-person visit? What materials do you use, and how do you use them?

Ramona: The campaigns we’re working now are so fast-paced, so we’re sharing materials via PowerPoint presentations on a video conferencing platform; we also use electronic PDFs.

In addition to showing providers electronic materials, you can still model an approach as you would in person by holding up some of the materials on the camera. For example, with naloxone education, we have naloxone spray “dummy” versions that I show providers on video; I ask if they have ever seen what a naloxone spray looks like, and whether they would be interested if I sent a model version, which they usually say yes to.
​
Kristina: That’s something we try and tell detailers who are pivoting to e-Detailing, which is that much of the interactive approach of an in-person visit is still accessible via video! Many detailers who are trying this out for the first time are eager to find ways to build a meaningful, trusting relationship with clinicians--do you have any advice for strong relationship-building approaches during e-Detailing visits?

Ramona: Sometimes, especially if it’s a new provider, I try to remind myself that I might not get to talk about any of the key messages. It’s really important to take that time to introduce yourself and your service. I don’t feel like it’s anything different than meeting someone face-to-face for the first time. However, detailers need some time to try this with each other, their team, or providers that they have a good relationship with. Detailers need to build that confidence before they go out and try these video calls with people they’ve never spoken with. The more I do it, the more confident I feel, which is key in building these relationships.

Kristina: That makes sense—it’s about comfort and confidence as much as knowing the evidence. We’ve also encouraged detailers to know that it may take more time to build up to delivering the key messages than you’d like it to, and to be patient and focus on building the relationship when carrying out visits online. In your experience, have you seen any drawbacks to e-Detailing?
​
Ramona: One thing is that detailers don’t have the luxury of getting a feel of what the clinic is like, which would be easy to observe in person. A lot of times when I am in a clinic, I get a chance to talk to an auxiliary support team, or I could just walk to the other room and talk to the nurse. I’ve found ways to adapt to e-Detailing to try and have more of the team’s perspective; I’ll often ask providers if they think it would helpful for the nurse to be on the call so we can have a group discussion. 

Kristina: It’s really about thinking outside the box and adapting the in-person approach, while trying to maintain connection. Is there anything else you’d like to share from your experiences with implementing e-Detailing?
​
Ramona: Detailers should acknowledge that this is a brand-new approach; you may not feel like this is your preferred way to talk to providers. Remember that it will take some time to get comfortable with it. There’s a learning curve. Now that I use this approach full-time, I just love it, and I don’t want to go back! It’s just as effective, a lot more efficient, and it allows you to be flexible.

Biography.
​Ramona Shayegani is the program lead for VHA’s Academic Detailing service in northern California, Nevada, Hawaii and Manila. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Oregon State University in 2014 and has clinical background in mental health and addiction medicine. She was one of the first detailers to pilot e-Detailing at the VA and has completed over 400 virtual detailing visits.

An interview with Nadejda Razi-Robertson, PhD, LCSW, Managing Director, Synergy Health Consulting and  Andrew Suchocki , MD, MPH, Medical Director, Clackamas Health Centers

by Anna Morgan, RN, BSN, MPH, NaRCAD Program Manager

Tags: COVID-19, Detailing Visits, Opioid Safety, ​Rural AD Program, Stigma, Substance Use

Anna: Thank you Nadejda and Andrew for spending time with us today to discuss the impressive work being done in your leadership roles around practice transformation at Synergy Health Consulting.  Can you tell us a little bit about Synergy and its impact on opioid safety-related care improvement?

​Nadejda: Our team works with health systems across the state of Oregon.  Our first phase of work started several years ago when we were largely focused on helping systems implement the CDC guidelines around opioid safety. Our work has since evolved, and we’re now focused on helping clinicians develop medication-assisted treatment programs, integrate behavioral health into primary care, and address the opioid epidemic at the community level. 

We often use academic detailing as one of the many tools in our toolbox when we work with different health systems on opioid safety. We take the basic concepts, such as conducting a needs assessment and identifying clinician barriers, from the traditional model of a detailing visit, and implement them on a larger scale.  

​Andrew: Many members of our team are practicing healthcare professionals in the field, which roots a lot of our work at Synergy.  I take what I’m seeing on the ground as both an administrator and a provider at a busy clinical practice and incorporate those experiences into my work at Synergy.

Anna: It’s so important to build teams where members have varied expertise and professional training when working together on practice transformation.  How have you incorporated academic detailing strategies into the work being done at Synergy, and how has it been received?

​Andrew: Some of the academic detailing work I’ve done has been with providers who need extra support from a peer, or from someone else working in the field.  When it comes to opioids, chronic pain, and addictions in primary care, there’s a tremendous amount of stigma and information that was accurate at one time, but as we’ve shifted as a society, many primary care providers are yet to catch up. 

​Stigma isn’t something that folks are actively choosing, it’s more of what they’ve been taught.  Changing that culture of practice is much more difficult compared to asking prescribers to prescribe cholesterol-lowering therapy.  There’s very little societal baggage when it comes to improving cholesterol than there is when it comes to destigmatizing addictions or chronic pain.

Nadejda: We use the same fundamental approach when working with systems, clinics, or individuals.  We start with a needs assessment, provide a group training based on those needs, and follow that up with 1:1 academic detailing visits to address barriers, provide materials, and explore personal bias that may be getting in the way of providing treatment. 

I’m currently working to schedule a training for several providers in a rural county in Oregon.  A number of those providers are X waivered (allowing them to prescribe medication therapy for patients with opioid use disorder), but they aren’t using their X waivers to prescribe buprenorphine.  A needs assessment will provide me with a better understanding of what the challenges and barriers are, what is working well, and where there may be bias, stigma, or gaps in knowledge.  We also use the needs assessment as a “listening session” that creates a sense of safety, fosters an experience that participants are being heard, and serves to “normalize” experiences across settings and practitioners. This process is also strategic in that it helps us understand where to focus our educational outreach and academic detailing efforts.  

The more we are doing this work, the more we are finding that this approach is effective in getting care teams, medical providers, and service providers across many sectors into increased “philosophical alignment” which is critical to effectively foster culture change around issues of pain, addiction, and trauma. 

Anna: Bias, stigma, and gaps in knowledge around chronic pain and addiction are common, especially in primary care.  We’ve found that many detailers have been successful in helping providers “catch up” to society and overcome personal bias through their detailing visits.  Speaking of detailing visits, face-to-face visits have clearly been impacted by COVID-19.  Can you tell us more about other ways that COVID-19 has impacted the work at Synergy?

Nadejda: Again, we’ve gone back to the wisdom of the original academic detailing model.  The needs of each setting have changed significantly, and we’ve been pivoting our work to meet those needs.  Providers want to know how to best support their patients who are dealing with pain during this time.  One thing we were able to provide early in the pandemic was a list of recommendations and resources around pain management for both providers and patients. ​

Andrew: We saw the need to adapt to massive changes related to COVID-19, and to do so essentially overnight.  We’ve had questions about conducting urine drug screenings, initiating treatment over the phone, and maintaining the patient-clinician relationship. 

There’s also a shared vulnerability among providers and patients when visits are conducted virtually.  Our patients have had requests for increased medication use, which is understandable because they’re not able to do activities that they’ve typically been able to do to keep themselves resilient.  That conversation is a difficult one - in some ways it is easier because you don’t have to see someone in person, but it also makes for a very ineffective conversation because you’re not able to demonstrate your humanity through body language.  Our team is struggling to wrap our head around this as we try to provide leadership and guide clinicians who are looking to us, or our state, for collective ideas around this field and how we practice. 

Anna: COVID-19 has certainly impacted the way we think about responding to changing needs for those who are trying to manage their pain.  Can you tell us about some of the other major changes you’ve seen in pain management over the past few years?

Andrew: The biggest thing I’ve seen is insurance expansion.  We’ve known for years what you need to have effective pain management and how important it is to shift the idea of living with pain and accepting pain versus eliminating pain.  We’ve seen Medicaid expansion and expansion of benefits, especially in the Northwest, that has given patients access to modalities that are effective for safer pain management. 
​
Historically, things we knew that worked like, gym memberships, physical therapy, occupational therapy, mindfulness, and chronic pain groups, were never paid for or weren’t available.  As society has changed how it believes pain should be managed, we’ve started to see the insurance side supporting these modalities more.  There’s also been heavy reporting on the opioid crisis in the media that has led patients to understand that opioids have risks. 

Nadejda: We’ve continued to grow and learn as a team over the past several years.  Our entry point into communication around chronic pain and pain management has continued to be centered around assessing if patients and their care teams have an understanding about how pain works.  We want to make sure that clinicians have the proper training and are up-to-date on evidence and resources.

Andrew: We’ve known some of this information about pain management and how pain works for a while, but it takes many years to take what we know from as a research perspective and translate it into practice.  One of our roles at Synergy is to accelerate that.  We’re seeing our evolution as a group mimic and reflect the experience we’re having as a culture as we start to dial in to the most effective ways to manage pain. 

Anna: As Synergy continues to respond to changing societal needs around pain management, what insights can you share about the impact of academic detailing to date?

Andrew: One thing I’ve learned about academic detailing is that it’s only as effective as your intervention across an entire system. I’ve realized that any work that I’m doing is irrelevant unless I’m addressing the entire system and the culture.  If the front desk staff isn’t on board, if the medical assistant isn’t a believer, if the nurse doesn’t understand addiction, if the CEO doesn’t understand that the health system is already treating these patients, there will be challenges that will be harder to overcome. 
​
Nadejda: Because academic detailing has been an arm of a larger change approach we’re using, it’s hard to measure its effects.  We don’t have data to show that only detailing has moved the needle around these topics in these ways.  Sometimes I see academic detailing as the “cherry on top” after there’s a lot of work that’s been done in prepping a system. I’ve recently been doing practice facilitation work with providers and clinics just to understand the barriers in a system—there’s an art to the change process in the pain management space.  Academic detailing comes in after you’ve truly understood what the barriers are.  After you understand the barriers, you can bring in nuggets of evidence and information in a way that the system is ready to receive. 

Biography. 
Nadejda Razi-Robertson is the Managing Director of Synergy Health Consulting, as well as Synergy’s project lead for the Oregon Health Authority’s Prescription Drug Overdose Prevention Project. Nadejda is a practice facilitator within health systems around the State of Oregon and provides technical assistance to clinics that are focusing QI efforts around safe opiate prescribing, MAT program development, and behavioral health integration. Over the past twelve years, she has worked in private practice with a specialty in trauma treatment, as a behavioral health provider in two Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and as a consultant with Oregon’s Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) and the Oregon Health Authority supporting efforts in addressing the opioid epidemic throughout the state of Oregon.

Biography.
Dr. Andrew Suchocki is a family physician with additional training in Preventive Medicine. He has worked in underserved medicine with a focus on chronic pain and addiction for ten years, and has been a medical director at an FQHC in the Portland, Oregon region for the past five. Andrew provides educational outreach and consultation in the areas of system change in primary care around opiate prescribing, MAT system design and capacity growth, coordinated specialty care, and reducing risk. Dr. Suchocki is an Oregon Opioid Prescribing Guidelines Task Force member and Oregon Medical Board consultant. He provides technical support and academic detailing for the Oregon Psychiatric Assistance Line (OPAL) which provides immediate referral sources for primary care. Dr. Suchocki also provides strategic planning, creation of innovative clinical decision support tools, physician mentoring, and health system process mapping for Yamhill County Health and Human Services, Community Corrections and Specialty Behavioral Health. He is a regular presenter at national and international pain related conferences.

An interview with Sarah Ball, PharmD, Research Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina and Megan Pruitt, PharmD, Clinical Pharmacy Consultant, SCORxE Academic Detailing Service and Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Outcomes Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina 
​
by Anna Morgan, RN, BSN, MPH, NaRCAD Program Manager

​Tags: COVID-19, Opioid Safety, Stigma, Substance Use, Training

Anna: Hi Sarah and Megan- thanks for taking the time to chat!  Can you tell us a bit about your program, SCORxE, and how your AD work has concentrated on improving opioid safety?
​
Sarah: SCORxE began in 2007 as an academic detailing service at the South Carolina College of Pharmacy and is now part of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) College of Pharmacy. Our current efforts are around addressing the opioid epidemic. We’re fully funded by the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and our agreement talks about  bringing together quality initiatives for safer opioid prescribing and expanding access to MAT.

We’ve been able to effectively bring together quality initiatives from different state agencies that span prevention and treatment. This braiding has been a unique experience for our academic detailing service. Regardless of the specific topic, our detailers promote opioid risk reduction strategies, help recruit and support MAT providers, and work to reduce stigma around MAT. We’re currently shifting our focus from chronic pain to acute pain. We’ll be detailing both primary care providers and surgeons on post-surgical pain.  

Anna: Detailing surgeons is a unique approach – we’d love to hear about the results of that process in the future. And you’re working on other topics outside of opioid safety, too – tell us more.

Sarah: Our providers always welcome new topics. While our focus is on the opioid epidemic, we try to expand our content reach when possible. We recently detailed on depression and anxiety screening, and touched on alcohol use disorder in our topic on naltrexone. We’ve always offered CME credits and our current strategy is shorter and more focused visits that offer a half hour of CME credit, as opposed to one or two hours of credit. This allows us to have multiple visits with each provider and to individualize next topic selection.
​
Megan: As a detailer, it’s helpful to have a menu of shorter topics that providers can choose from – it makes our visits more flexible.  

Anna: Speaking of flexibility - how are you continuing to detail and run your program given the current COVID-19 pandemic?

Sarah: We haven’t previously engaged in virtual visits or e-detailing. We’re planning to reach out to our network of academic detailing colleagues who’ve had e-detailing visits in the past to see what their experience has been like. It’s times like these that show how valuable it is to have a network of academic detailing services. Being able to share ideas and find out what other folks have done will help us determine what will work best in our state.

Megan: We’ve been using the past few weeks to work on creating materials and scripts for upcoming topics. It’s been a good time to refresh on a lot of our content and update various internal documents. I’m going to begin reaching out to providers within the next few weeks and gauge their interest and comfort level in using a virtual platform. 
​
Sarah: We know this is a difficult time for primary care providers, so it’s important for us to be compassionate in how we go about scheduling visits. We want to be sensitive to our providers’ time and respect what they’re going through, while still offering our detailing service around topics related to the opioid epidemic.

Anna: You’re not alone in figuring out this balance! You also mentioned that peer learning is an important component to a successful intervention. Can you tell us about your own peers on your team, and how they enhance your overall detailing service?

Sarah: Our program is under the College of Pharmacy, so we’ve recruited all our detailers from there and they’ve all been clinical pharmacists. We’re fortunate to have pharmacists because they’re well-respected among providers we visit. We have two full-time detailers, which is a privilege, and they’re very passionate about their work. Being able to have two people fully commit to detailing is far greater than the number implies. Both of our detailers have different personalities and different experiences to share – I think they complement each other very well!
​
Detailing can be lonely, though. When you have more detailers in your program that add up to two full time equivalents, what we have had in the past, you have more people sharing experiences during debriefs and more people to bounce ideas off; there are pros and cons to both scenarios.  

Megan: My colleague, Lauren, and I come from different clinical backgrounds. When we work on our content development and role playing, we’re able to help each other consider things differently. It’s been fun to work with somebody who differs so much from me!
​
Anna: It sounds like you balance each other out well. How are the detailers in your program trained?

Sarah: All of our detailers have gone through pretty intense academic detailing training on the marketing of evidence-informed clinical ideas. Our most recent hires have gone through NaRCAD training, but before there was a NaRCAD, our pharmacists went through a training developed by a group in Australia. That training gave us a step up on everything when we first started our program, as NaRCAD also does with programs just getting started. We garnered our baseline of how we develop content, how we develop our supporting materials, and essentially how we put together our whole intervention.

Anna:  It sounds like the detailers in your program are trained well and prepared for the field.  Do you have certain strategies for getting in the door? Are there key stakeholders who your program has connected with that have helped you to do this?

Megan:  Showing up at the office has repeatedly proven to work for us. We bring a letter to share with the first gatekeeper at the front desk, so that we can get face-to-face time with the providers for introductions. We’re usually able to schedule a meeting fairly easily after that. If we can’t meet with the provider face-to-face, we try to speak with the Office Manager. 
​
Recently, we’ve been leveraging our group presentations at clinics to get more 1:1 visits. We try to promote our detailing visits during our presentations and grab contact information from providers afterwards. We’ve also found that it’s been helpful to stay in the break room at an office after a visit - we might stay there all day and introduce ourselves to a number of providers who end up wanting to either schedule a visit that day or in the future. We’ve found great success in being present for providers when they’re ready. 

Sarah: When you can get face-to-face with the providers for a brief introduction, it’s a beautiful thing-it’s how we’ve gotten most of our visits over the years. When we first started, gaining access happened in different ways. We had champions in the area that supported what we were doing, and we could use that to get our detailers in the door. Our program was also previously part of a demonstration project where providers were required to have an academic detailing visit as part of the initiative. I would say that our cold calls became “warm calls” during that time because all the offices and providers knew we were coming.
​
Anna: I’m sure having providers in the area know about your detailing service has helped to build your program. Can you tell us more about how your program is working towards sustainability?

Sarah: We’re more sustainable than we’ve been for a while. Part of that is due to the funding that we have for opioid-related topics, but it’s also been due to the effort our program has put into effectively bringing together different quality initiatives over the years. We’ve had funding come in from multiple sources in that process. 

One agency asked us to take on the topic of naloxone for pharmacists--our ability to respond to such requests helps up strengthen relationships, and may help us with future sustainability. It is also important that our interprofessional teams at MUSC see value in academic detailing.
​
Additionally, our detailers help us with sustainability through their visit documentation and tracking. The data they collect is included in our reporting and helps illustrate the value of academic detailing. Our clinical pharmacists are amazing people, and they both bring so much to what we do in the academic detailing world– programs are only as sustainable as the strength of their individual detailers!

Biography.
Sarah Ball, PharmD is a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), with a focus on patient-centered care, patient safety, and educational outreach. She has had direct involvement with academic detailing for over twelve years, beginning with the development and implementation of the SCORxE Academic Service under the SC College of Pharmacy in 2007.  Current efforts include the integration of research and programmatic opportunities to identify interventions that change prescriber behavior to reduce the risk of opioid overuse, misuse, abuse, and overdose. Dr. Ball is currently leading the MUSC team partnering with the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services for the provision of drug utilization review (DUR) services, which includes educational outreach to primary care providers and surgeons.  Dr. Ball has twenty plus years with a career focus on improving patient care through the application of technology and effective communication of clinical knowledge, information, and data-derived findings. She is a graduate of the Medical University of South Carolina, where she received both a B.S. in Pharmacy and Pharm.D.

​Biography. 
​Dr. Megan Pruitt is a South Carolina Offering Prescribing Excellence (SCORxE) clinical pharmacy consultant and assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Outcomes Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. She received her bachelor of science in health science from Clemson University and her doctor of pharmacy from the South Carolina College of Pharmacy. She has published an Amazon ebook, Catalyst (pharmD): The Next Generation Pharmacy Student, and has previous experience as a community pharmacist at Federally Qualified Health Center in South Carolina. In her current role as a SCORxE clinical pharmacy consultant, she provides academic detailing visits to primary care providers on monitoring practices to promote safe opioid use and to reduce the risk of misuse and abuse in South Carolina. 

Winnie: We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today about the work that MICIS (Maine Independent Clinical Information Service) has done supporting evidence-based prescribing since 2008, and safer opioid prescribing since 2016. Can you tell us a little bit more about MICIS?
 
Elisabeth: We’re a small program created by legislation in the state of Maine, housed within the Maine Medical Association. We serve over 8600 prescribers including physicians, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants across the entire state. Our two detailers are contracted to work about 5 hours a week each, which includes all of our administrative and detailing time.

​​​Winnie: That’s an amazing feat to be serving such a large population with a small team. How have you built and maintained all of those relationships?

Elisabeth: We have always used more of a general educational outreach approach than the traditional one-on-one academic detailing model. We have limited resources with our contract, and the only way to reach that number of prescribers is to do small groups or lectures.
 
Winnie: We understand that there are many programs who adapt the original model of detailing to allow for more than one provider at a time to participate. While it’s a common workaround solution to having limited resources and a long list of providers to detail, it can be more difficult to discuss challenging topics, especially something like opioids and related stigma. How have you been able to navigate those challenges?

Elisabeth: When we detail in our groups, we focus on small group discussions. One method I use involves flashcards with myths or biases about Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), and asking two or three of the attendees to discuss that amongst themselves. We have also used a language sheet that guides providers in what to say.
 
We have people talk about the language commonly used in practice, and how that can affect the care that’s provided. I think just like any other place, we encounter people who have all of the biases that you’ve heard of when it comes to opioid use disorder – that it’s not a disease, that buprenorphine and methadone are just trading one drug for another.
 
Winnie: There must be a lot to unpack when discussing the root of where these beliefs come from. It’s a core component of what we hope to achieve through academic detailing – an honest dialogue that leads to positive clinical practice outcomes.

Elisabeth: Exactly. I think it’s important to understand that, for example, with chronic pain prescribing, there are a lot of people who are reluctant to embrace evidence from the past five years that shows no benefit from opioids, and more significant evidence of harm. It’s been interesting to see how people have been stuck on what they learned twenty years ago, and to see them reject the newer information.
 
Winnie: It’s incredibly important that detailers remember in navigating tough conversations about stigma that there is a shared goal of promoting patient health. No provider undergoes training and hard work with the intention of harming patients.

Elisabeth: I think these tough conversations can produce some cognitive dissonance in people. Basically, if I, as a physician myself, agree with the premise that what I did fifteen years ago actually contributed to OUD in my patients, and if I admit that, then I also have to carry a burden that it was my fault. It’s a hard jump for people who made it their life’s work to care for people.
 
Winnie: It’s absolutely a human response. What have you found to be an effective way of addressing the problems caused by stigma, while also addressing the fact that providers are human?
 
Elisabeth: People don’t want to be overwhelmed by data, but repeated snippets of data over time can help you reinforce the message, which is what we do with academic detailing. I think of myself in my work as a physician – I started on opioid education projects more than half a decade ago. It wasn’t my top choice, but I became more and more educated about the crisis and heard the information in multiple ways. It really changed my way of thinking to the point of realizing I needed to be part of the solution. I received my X-Waiver back in 2016 and started prescribing buprenorphine.

Winnie: That’s a wonderful reflection on how repeated messaging helped change your mindset as a provider. It’s important to understand that people can change, no matter what holds them back.
 
Elisabeth: I think that as academic detailers, we might not always recognize the impact right away. We might not get the immediate positive feedback from a clinician after an interaction, but especially if you’re lucky enough to grow relationships with the people you detail over time, you can see the change. I think that’s the most effective and rewarding part of detailing.
 
I prescribe buprenorphine because I can teach about it, but I also do it because it’s important. This work gives us an opportunity to be leaders for people who don’t always have a voice, and because of stigma, aren’t being listened to. Most of our patients with OUD are on the margins and struggle even during stable economic times. Especially right now with the COVID-19 pandemic, the rest of the country may not be worrying about how we’re going to safely maintain our patients on buprenorphine, but we need to worry about it.

An interview with Tony de Melo, RPh, Director of Clinical Education Programs, Alosa Health
​by Anna Morgan, RN, BSN, MPH, NaRCAD Program Manager

​Tags: Detailing Visits, Opioid Safety, Program Management, ​Training

NaRCAD: Tony, thanks for chatting with us today about your role at Alosa Health! What’s been the most exciting part of the work that Alosa has done this year? 
​
 
Tony: Our partnership with Aetna, a managed health care company and health care insurer. We’ve been working with them to provide educational outreach to providers on chronic pain, acute pain, and opioid use disorder (OUD); supporting them in managing pain using non-opioid drug options; appropriately dosing opioids when they need to be used; tapering down patients who are on existing high doses of opioids; and helping to identify patients that may have opioid use disorder.  We’re now working in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois and Maine.

NaRCAD: That collaboration does sound exciting!  Now, let’s talk a little about your role at Alosa.  You actively detail, you manage academic detailers in the field, and you lead trainings at Alosa. Which aspect of your role is your favorite, and why? 
 
​
Tony:  When I’m training and managing detailers, I see myself more as a coach than a trainer.  I’ve always liked educating and teaching—I enjoy helping others develop their skills and seeing them improve.  Training folks and coaching them in the field is rewarding to me because I feel that I’m impacting what they’re doing in their own communities.  It brings me happiness to see others succeed.  

NaRCAD:  As a coach, how do you know when your work has been impactful?

​
Tony:  When I work with detailers in the field, I can see firsthand that they are able to be impactful with the providers because they are bringing about behavior change with their message delivery and confidence.  We can also measure how impactful our work is by reviewing our Salesforce data.  I can see from the detailer’s visit notes when providers have agreed to a behavior change, and this is a true measure of our work being impactful.

NaRCAD:  With success comes challenges.  What are some of the major challenges you see academic detailers face in training and in the field?

​
Tony: The major challenge is teaching detailers to have a conversation with clinicians rather than a lecture. Making the visit more conversational doesn’t often come as naturally as presenting the information in a lecture format, but the conversation must be about understanding where the provider is now, what their needs might be, and how to deliver content to make behavior change.  

In the field, the major challenge is access to providers. Many health systems have regulations and restrictions for those who want to meet with providers, because representatives in the pharma industry have bombarded and overloaded providers throughout the years.  As a result, we’re often seen as an outside influence or an outside visitor, so we aren’t always given the opportunity to meet with a provider. 

​
NaRCAD: With these challenges in mind, how do you instill confidence in academic detailers as a trainer and as a manager?

Tony: We spend a lot of time practicing and providing feedback during trainings.  We practice individually, with partners, and with outside folks who are playing the role of providers.  Practicing multiple situations, multiple times, over multiple days, builds confidence.  We also videotape the trainees so that they can see what they’re doing well and what they can improve upon. 

​
As a manager in the field, it’s quite similar. I usually sit down with each detailer after a visit and discuss what worked well and what they could do differently in their next visit, so that each visit becomes a learning opportunity.  Providing feedback and being a mirror for the detailers helps them to build confidence and skills as time goes on.  I also offer the detailers my perspective; having spent time doing this myself and observing others, I can share the tricks, skills, and wording I’ve heard throughout my time with the detailers.

NaRCAD:  Those are all great ways to build confidence among detailers. What’s one piece of advice that you would give to academic detailers?

​
Tony:  Don’t be afraid to ask for a specific behavior change, and remember to follow up to make sure that the behavior change occurs.  One thing that I find to be hard for academic detailers is the “ask”, where detailers are asking for commitment or behavior change from a provider at the end of the visit.  I always tell detailers to frame it as, “based on what you’ve heard today, what is one thing you’d do differently?”  Follow-up then ensures that providers are committed to change and holds them accountable for what they said they would do.  

NaRCAD:  That’s extremely helpful advice for detailers. What’s the best thing a program manager could do to maintain high levels of engagement among detailers?


Tony:  As a manager who’s coaching or guiding others, it’s important to build trust between yourself and the folks you’re coaching or managing. It can be lonely when you’re in the field detailing by yourself, so managers need to have touchpoints with their detailers.  Building trust and having your detailers know you’re all working together helps them stay self-motivated; it makes them want to go out into the field and do a good job because they know someone is backing them up.

​
NaRCAD: Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today. We value your unique perspective on detailing, managing, and training!

Biography.
​Tony de Melo manages field staff and leads academic detailer trainings at Alosa Health. He attended Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston, where he received a BS in Pharmacy with a minor in Business Administration.  This business interest led him to work for several pharmaceutical companies as a sales representative, account manager, training manager, district/regional manager, associate director of managed markets training, head of sales training, and development & marketing product manager. He has also worked for smaller businesses that were looking to grow their sales and marketing programs. Throughout his career, Tony has successfully sold, marketed, trained, led, designed, developed and executed solutions to meet business objectives.

​Director's Letter | Mike Fischer, MD, MS, Director of NaRCAD

​Tags: Director's Letter, HIV/AIDS, Opioid Safety, Training

​As NaRCAD enters its 10th year as the only national resource center dedicated to clinical outreach education, we’re ready to take our collaborations with you to the next level. The strength and sustainability of NaRCAD has grown from the hard work we’ve done together with you, our community members in the field.

We’re committed to continuing to provide the technical assistance you need to make your programs innovative, efficient, and successful. As we kick off 2020, our entire team at NaRCAD invites you to join us in leading our field forward through strategic partnerships, resource-sharing, and peer learning, all to implement important initiatives that will have a significant impact on clinicians and their patients.
​
The nature of our role as a resource center has continued to grow in parallel with increased recognition of the importance of academic detailing as a strategy to address multiple clinical challenges. We’ve been especially excited to see the effectiveness of AD enhanced when aligned with other initiatives to improve the quality of care.

​Responding to this growing demand, we’ve dramatically expanded our reach, conducting 20 trainings in 15 different states across the US in the past two years alone, and 2020 looks to be no different. With the increased demand for AD technical assistance, we have a busy year ahead of us, from capturing your successes and sharing them via our DETAILS Blog to training your detailers to be ready for field work (and troubleshooting challenges along the way.)

Although we have been conducting more trainings recently, we see the demand for them continuing to grow at an even faster pace. As we grow, so does our core team, and all of us are dedicated to amplifying the impact of the important work you do. We’re already starting to plan for NaRCAD2020, our 8th annual conference, and we invite you to consider submitting your ideas and innovations when we start accepting submissions on March 1, 2020. But you don’t need to wait until then—we’re here to offer you customized support to strengthen your program, as you plan for success in 2020 and beyond. ​
Happy New Year!
-Mike

​An interview with Rachel Lemons, Project Manager, ONE Tennessee
by Anna Morgan, RN, BSN, MPH, NaRCAD Program Manager

​Tags: Opioid Safety, ​Project Management

NaRCAD: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today—we’re excited to hear about you and your team! Can you tell us a bit about ONE Tennessee and how your organization first became involved with academic detailing?

​Rachel: ONE Tennessee is a state-wide nonprofit healthcare collaborative who is focused on fighting the opioid epidemic. We were founded as an outcome of a summit hosted by the Tennessee Department of Health called “Turning the Tide.”  The summit joined together healthcare professionals and stakeholders to discuss best practices for tackling the epidemic.  Academic detailing was highlighted as a best practice during the summit and it was collectively decided that it would become one of our initial projects.  ONE Tennessee brought the academic detailing pilot program to life through the opioid crisis funding the Department of Health received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ​

NaRCAD: We’re glad to know that the strategy of AD was highlighted! You’re now managing a program of detailers focused on opioid safety across the state of Tennessee—tell us what that’s like.    ​

Rachel: Exciting! Once our detailers were trained by your team, my role was very much supportive in nature.  I helped our detailers to identify clinicians in their communities, and troubleshoot any issues.  We were fortunate enough to be able to recruit a passionate group of pharmacists for our pilot, and that made my job easier from a clinical standpoint, since they’re the subject matter experts on opioid prescribing. They‘re on the front line of the epidemic, and they fit the perfect mold for engaging with clinicians to build a strong and trusting relationship.

​NaRCAD: You recently completed the pilot stage of your program. What would you say are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned so far about building an academic detailing program? 
​
Rachel:  Getting in the door was one of the biggest barriers our detailers faced.  From a programmatic standpoint, I think ONE Tennessee could have done a little more foundational work for our detailers, like speaking with our stakeholders and educating them on academic detailing as it relates to the opioid initiative—that would have really helped our detailers gain access to clinicians.

We also learned that time was a barrier for our detailers.  Our initial grant period was only one year, and things moved very quickly.  We recruited full-time community pharmacists, so having the bandwidth to prepare and complete academic detailing visits was often difficult, especially if there was limited employer support.  

NaRCAD: Those are all familiar challenges across many of the programs we support. How did you maintain strong relationships with your detailers and support them in the work that they were doing in the field? 
​
Rachel:  I always had an open line of communication with our detailers.  We had standing monthly webinars, but it was difficult to find a time that worked for everyone because they were full-time pharmacists.  Our detailers were scattered across the state and were mostly in rural areas, so I was not able to meet with them in person; however, I was available via email, phone call, and text message.  I learned early on that I had to meet detailers where they were.  Some detailers did not have time to check email, so it was easier to do a quick call at lunch or early in the morning before their day got started.  It really depended on the needs of the detailer, but I always maintained an open line of communication.  

​NaRCAD: That’s a great model, and regular communication helps detailers feel a sense of community through a project. Other supports are often more concrete, like tools and resources. What are some that you've found to be critical to program success, and why?  ​

Rachel: I think first and foremost, our partners, specifically NaRCAD, the Tennessee Pharmacists Association, the Tennessee Hospital Association, the Tennessee Nurses Association, the Tennessee Medical Association, and the Tennessee Department of Health, were a tremendous resource that made our program incredibly successful.  Google’s  platform (Google Drive, Google Sheets, and Google Docs) was also critical to our success, as it allowed us to share data and updates in real time.  We did not have access to specific evaluation tools because we are a young organization and our grant period was only one year.  Our shared space online helped me to stay organized and capture information from our detailers all in one place, and it was free!

NaRCAD: These are all great reflections for AD program managers to learn from. Based on the successes and challenges of this pilot, where do you see your program in a year?

Rachel: I see us continuing our current model with our inaugural group of academic detailing community pharmacists while working towards designing, developing, and implementing a “train -the -trainer” model in partnership with your team.  I also see us having discussions with large and small hospital systems to customize plans to fit their unique needs related to opioid safety.  Most importantly, we want to continue to support the state and our other healthcare stakeholders who are with us on this journey. 
​
NaRCAD: We’re happy to help support that vision. Any other important advice/tip that you’d give to other young programs? 

Rachel:  Patience.  You must have an understanding that there are going to be pitfalls, but if you have the support and the right people involved, your program is going to succeed.  Also, don’t try to reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to.  There are so many other programs out there — reach out to people and have conversations!

NaRCAD: Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us.  We're excited to see the impact of your program into the future. 

Biography.
Rachel Lemons found passion for public service early on in life. She is committed to assisting those with the greatest need in her community. She’s working to effect change socially and through public policy. She is a graduate of East Tennessee State University, where she received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health. Her involvement with Tennessee’s Opioid Epidemic began with the Department of Health, where she was exposed to the State’s rapid response in this fight which lead her to joining ONE Tennessee as a Project Manager. She continues to build her career with a practical and wide ranging set of experiences in order to gain a global perspective on health issues facing communities today. Rachel is an active member in the Junior League of Nashville, Tennessee Public Health Association and currently serves as the Board Intern at Cheekwood Estate & Gardens in Nashville.

NaRCAD: Zack, thank you for taking the time to speaking with us today! RxFiles has been around for more than 20 years. What do you do you believe is driving the demand for the resources that academic detailing is providing?

Zack: There’s an element of doubt in the information out there, because people have experienced misinformation before. People are often interested in the truth and that’s one of the most amazing things about academic detailing. There is also a desire for practical information that can be used to actually treat patients, and there’s a ton of overlap there. These things are important to these very, very busy providers who want the best for their patients.
​
NaRCAD: We know that your team is working on a cannabinoid campaign, which can be a nebulous topic. Can you discuss a little more about cannabinoid policy and conceptions in Canada?
​
Zack:  We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of recreational marijuana legalization, but medicinal cannabis has been legal for about two decades. With the legalization of recreational cannabis though, we’re seeing fairly rapid change in perceptions of what the truth is. It’s tough to keep up with.

​With academic detailing, it was challenging to decide how to tackle it – can we just talk about the medicinal cannabis side? Or do we have to dive deeper? When we dug into it, it became clear that we also had to talk about the recreational side. For example, the people we provided our services to also wanted to know, “if I decline my patient cannabis prescriptions, what will they be able to get on their own?”

​NaRCAD: Did RxFiles choose to launch its cannabinoid campaign with the passage of the Act, or has this been planned for a longer period of time?

Zack: It’s coinciding with our work on pain, following our work on pain and opioids. In addition, because legalization was approaching, the providers had more questions because their patients were asking about cannabis as an alternative to opioids.

NaRCAD: How have provider responses been to the cannabinoid campaign so far?

Zack: It’s welcomed. Our information is usually welcomed. There’s some frustration over how little information there is out there. While frustrating, I think it’s kind of comforting to know that we’re not that far behind. It’s kind of mixed, but at the same time, they’re still happy to get information from a trusted resource. There's a lot of gray area information right now because it's a newer field. 

​NaRCAD: Right now is a shifting and transformational time, especially with something like cannabinoids with a distinct history of stigma and legalization, even with all this new interest. As an academic detailer, how do you source your information knowing that there isn’t enough research out yet and a lot of gray area information? How do you begin to build a campaign around a topic like this?
​
Zack: The evidence pyramid gives us the best approach for practical information, for people who are the interface of care. You want to find high quality, synthesized information. Whether its osteoporosis or COPD or pain or cannabis, you start with the guidelines and figure out what kind of information they are providing. We started with some recently published guidelines and it was a synthesis of systematic reviews, and made an attempt to summarize all the evidence of where cannabis was found to be of benefit. We also reviewed the bibliography with all the primary literature and metanalyses.

​This process is pretty similar for any academic detailing topic. The other process is going to the people we provide services for, and asking what their patients are asking to treat with cannabis. They tend to ask about cannabis for pain, insomnia, or for things like tremors and that gives us some guidance in terms of what kind of literature we want to find. Of course, we are also looking into what the key messages are in the information we find and distribute. With cannabis, the interesting thing was the lack of information on the different conditions it could be used for. In some ways, it was easier, as weird as it sounds. We didn’t have as much reading to do on that topic. 

NaRCAD: Is there any advice you would give any other academic detailing organizations considering this topic for a campaign?
 
Zack: One, you’re going to have your conversations about stigma. There isn’t a perfect picture of who uses cannabis and it could be absolutely anyone. You’ve got to have the conversation about stigma and get to know your own biases.

In the same vein, we thought about how important word choice and language is. We thought about whether or not we call it cannabis, marijuana, pot, or cannabinoids. Do we call it a medication or a product? All of those words and the considerations that we’ve given opioids  - do we call them "addicts", or is it "dependence", and what are the differences between addiction and dependence? The third piece would be that you’ve got to talk to your providers in your local area and find out what their main questions are.

​Your job is to provide a service, and if you can find out what their wants and needs are, you’ll provide a far more satisfying service for them and could establish strong relationships that you can build on. There will be a lot of information out there and you will need a lot of leads to help you sort through it all. This won’t be the last time we're addressing this.
​
NaRCAD: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, and for leading the charge in bringing cannabinoids to the conversation about treatment for pain.

NaRCAD: Thanks so much for joining us to share how your detailing project has gone in Ware County, Georgia, Dr. Parks. Can you talk to us a bit about how the opioid crisis has presented itself in your community?

Rosemarie: Our agency serves 16 counties in Southeast Georgia, and we have seen the same things across all of these counties. The opioid crisis affects the community across the board; in every sector. Law enforcement is seeking the effects of this crisis, so is healthcare, and people that work with children and families. They all acknowledge that they’re seeing it in their day-to-day work.  So many public health topics only affect one sector, but this opioid crisis affects them all.

NaRCAD: With it affecting so many, did you think the strategy of academic detailing would lend itself to improving patient health in response to the opioid crisis in Ware County?

Rosemarie: Being a clinician myself, I did initially see how academic detailing would be a good public health intervention. I thought academic detailing would make the lives of providers better by providing them with evidence-based information and resources. As we discussed during the training with NaRCAD, there’s so much information out there, and it’s really difficult to sort through all of it. 

In public health, we’re facilitators, data people, and information sharers.  I really believed AD would work when I saw the statistics about Ware County during the 2-day training. Ware County is the highest prescribing county in the state, and the 12th highest prescribing county in the nation. Those statistics are eye-opening, and I believed that would make detailing successful in Ware County by raising awareness of how the opioid crisis is impacting our own community.

NaRCAD: You mentioned being a clinician—you’re also the Public Health Director for your district. How does being both a clinician and the Public Health Director make it easier for you to be successful as a detailer?

Rosemarie: My position allowed me to easily make appointments, and I did not have difficulties getting in the door, like so many other detailers do. I often had visits that were a lot longer than the usual 15 minutes, because clinicians would set aside more time to talk to me. My clinical experience as a primary care physician in private practice for many years made is so that I could relate to the clinicians, and allowed for more honest sharing. I would tell other doctors what worked and didn’t work for my practice, and that made them more comfortable opening up about their own experiences. 

NaRCAD: That’s excellent—this is an example of how pre-existing relationships and a fusion of both experience in clinical care as well as public health can really merge to encourage change. What else was unique about your detailing experience?

Rosemarie: Another thing that was unique in Ware County is we did both 1:1 visits, as the original model suggests, as well as group visits. There were many occasions upon which multiple providers and key leadership from a health system were all together in one room. This allowed providers to hear from other providers, and I saw that as a critical dynamic.  The conversations continued well after those visits ended, and still continue to this day. It was also important that key leadership was present because they heard exactly how the issue is impacting clinicians and patients, and they have the power to make decisions affecting opioids in their health system.  

NaRCAD: It’s great to hear that a group education approach worked so well. What would you say has been the most impactful piece of this intervention?

Rosemarie: I think academic detailing for the opioid crisis worked so well in Ware County because public health is seen as a neutral entity, and because of that, we were able to effectively facilitate these discussions. We do a lot of work in the healthcare community but it is rare that the public health department takes the time to visit an individual practice or provider.  During my visits, I witnessed clinicians take in the data about how Ware is one of the highest prescribing counties in the nation, and saw how it immediately encouraged them to want to make a change. 

After answering initial questions about where the data came from, clinicians were open to discussing things in more detail, and were consistent in enacting the CDC’s opioid stewardship recommendations, especially consistently using the PDMP. It also gave clinicians the opportunity to express concerns and challenges they face in their daily practices.

NaRCAD: We’re so glad academic detailing has been impactful in your community. What has the greatest challenge been with implementing a successful academic detailing intervention to improve opioid safety in Ware County?

Rosemarie: The overall experience has been fantastic. As we discussed, the providers were really open and honest. For me personally, as a detailer, it was difficult not to feel like I needed to be the one who had all the answers. I handled this by being a link to information, rather than having all of the information myself.

For instance, when a clinician asked a question, or requested a resource I didn’t know about, I’d say something along the lines of, “Let me do some research about that, and when I come back I’ll be sure to have that information.” It helped when I was able to give the disclaimer that “I’m by no means the expert, but I’ve learned a tremendous amount about opioids and the crisis, and I’m here to share some of that information with you. And if I don’t know the answer to something, I can find someone who does.”  

NaRCAD: That’s a great way to handle that kind of situation, and academic detailers are indeed the connector to resources, and certainly don’t need to know all of the answers. Well-handled! And speaking of not knowing all the answers, what is something you wish you knew prior to joining the LOOPR Academic Detailing project?
 
Rosemarie: Personally, there were no big surprises. Everyone did a great job in explanting the process, executing the training, and providing resources. Like anything though, you don’t really get the hang of it until you get those first few visits under your belt and become more comfortable. Overall, this has been a great experience. It was so helpful having additional resources, learning from people that are highly knowledgeable and respected in this field, and being able to share experiences across all LOOPR sites with other detailers who are doing the same work.

Via NaRCAD, NACCHO, & the CDC’s pilot project, “LOOPR”, we were able to connect with high-burden counties across the U.S. whose rates of high prescribing and high fatal and non-fatal overdoses identified them as a county in need of support. NaRCAD worked on the implementation of an academic detailing initiative over the course of 2017-2019 with Boone County, located in rural West Virginia.
 
Boone County ranks as the 22nd most vulnerable county across all counties in the United States, with the highest drug overdose mortality rate of all counties in West Virginia. Due to these and other data, Boone was identified as a key county in which to test the implementation of an academic detailing program, in which trained detailers would speak to clinicians and pharmacists about safer prescribing of opioids, checking the state’s prescription drug monitoring program to avoid dangerous co-prescribing of opioids and benzodiazepines, and to try and provide treatment, non-opioid therapy, and resources to patients in need.

​One of the most unique approaches across all 5 sites of the LOOPR Project was carried out in Boone, with the team of 5 detailers being hand-selected from the nearby University of Charleston West Virginia’s School of Pharmacy. Four of these five recruited detailers were students in training to become pharmacists; one detailer works at the university as a professor of pharmacy. Selecting pharmacy students and faculty allowed for many positive approaches to the project, as well as creating unforeseen challenges.
 
Programs considering hiring student detailers can often rely on the flexibility of students’ schedules, as well as an enthusiasm and energy for learning that may exist in smaller quantities later in one’s career, when full-time roles in healthcare take priority. While many career-established clinicians may have little room in their schedules to squeeze in 1:1 sessions with fellow clinicians, students may have more of an ability to shift their schedules, especially if they are not yet carrying out residency.

a reflections from Boone County’s Detailing Team, it’s clear that best practices in detailing should also consider the vast amounts of new information that students are absorbing early in their learning careers, and that learning clinical content may take longer to grasp. In addition, the comfort level with new clinical information may lead to less confidence in discussing best practices, especially with clinicians whose careers are much more established. Finding the right balance of tenacity, communications savvy, more time to ramp up to comfort in delivering and leading 1:1 sessions, an additional amount of technical assistance provided at more frequent intervals, and additional practice time or shadowing time with a mentor, can all benefit student detailers who are training to join a clinical outreach education team in a high burden area.
 
With these elements in place, a student detailer may be poised for success—however, other considerations include the fact that students may have new projects, graduation pending, or life events which may end up limiting their ability to dedicate consistent time to a project rolled out over many months.

​Other reflections from the Boone County AD Team included looking carefully at the social climate in which AD interventions of this nature may be implemented. While no county is free of potential clinician-level or community-level stigma, particularly around issues such as opioid use disorder, Boone’s AD team shared a particularly challenging setting within which the local community was not as supportive of evidence-based harm reduction initiatives as would be beneficial. One detailer’s suggestion to raise the visibility of and advocacy for harm reduction included considering a public health campaign prior to a detailing campaign, to ensure that subsequent roll-out of detailing is more sustainable and met with an openness from clinicians to consider behavior change.
 
NaRCAD’s work with the public health department in Boone County, in partnership with the students and faculty of University of Charleston, West Virginia, provided the kinds of insights critical to learning from a pilot project of this nature. As with many pilot studies, any information gathered can illustrate a clearer picture of the landscape within which public health initiatives can be implemented, so that future projects may have a greater impact. With many thanks to the student and faculty team of Boone County’s Academic Detailing Project team, we and our partners are grateful to have learned so much over the past two years.