AMERSA People & Passion, Episode 7: Palliative Care: Bridging the Gap for Addiction Treatment in People with Serious Illness

Substance Use Disorders are common in people with serious illness and contribute immensely to suffering and poor quality of life. People with addiction and serious illness are an underserved population with unmet and complex medical and psychosocial needs. In this episode, Palliative care clinicians will discuss the overlap between both fields, educational initiatives, patient cases, and innovative models of collaboration to bridge the gap.

 

Julie W. Childers, MD, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2005 and completed residency training in internal medicine at the University of Rochester in 2008. She completed fellowship training in palliative care in 2009 and obtained a master’s degree in medical education in 2010. She began treating opioid use disorder in 2010, and in 2018 became board certified in Addiction Medicine. In addition to her work as a palliative care specialist, she attends on the inpatient Addiction Medicine Consult Service, has an active outpatient practice treating substance use disorders, and developed a new ACGME-accredited addiction medicine fellowship. She has written and taught nationally in the areas of teaching communication, motivational interviewing, medical ethics, and managing addiction in patients with serious illness.

Katie Fitzgerald Jones, BSN, MSN, APN, is a Palliative Nurse Practitioner at VA Boston Healthcare System and PhD student at Boston College Connell School of Nursing. Her clinical and research interests improve pain management, quality of life and enhance opioid safety in individuals with cancer and substance use disorder. Past clinical experience includes developing a sustainable Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner Fellowship at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, serving as the Palliative Nurse Director, and creating an innovative Palliative Care Program for older adults at Hebrew Senior Life. Ms. Jones has been an active member of the Palliative Care Academic Community. Over the past years has been an invited speaker at the Harvard Center for Palliative Care, the Harvard Inter-Professional Palliative Care, and the Harvard Geriatric Fellowship. Ms. Jones is a co-leader of the national hospice and palliative care buprenorphine clinical mentorship support group and research group. In her early research work- she has examined biopsychosocial factors associated with long-term opioid use in cancer survivors, parallels between Palliative Care and Substance Use Disorder Treatment, and Buprenorphine prescribing practices in Palliative Care clinicians. Her research is currently funded by the Foundation of Addiction Nursing and the National Institute of Nursing Research Predoctoral Fellowship Award (F31). She has authored several manuscripts and book chapters on the intersection between palliative care and substance use disorders and has spoken nationally on various related topics.

Dr. Janet Ho is a board-certified palliative medicine and addiction medicine physician at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed internal medicine training and chief residency at Yale, a masters in public health at Harvard, and fellowships in health services research, palliative care, and addiction medicine at Harvard, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. Her clinical and research interests lie at the intersection of serious illness, addiction, pain, and chronic cancer pain. Dr. Ho is dedicated to improving provider knowledge and confidence in primary palliative care and addiction medicine; improving disparate quality of life and care for patients with life-limiting serious illness and addiction; understanding the role of buprenorphine in palliative care; and challenging stigma against patients who use drugs. She has been invited to teach with the Harvard Center for Palliative Care, the Harvard Inter-professional Palliative care fellowship, the UCSF Division of hospital medicine, the UCSF palliative care fellowship, and has presented at several national conferences. She is a co-leader of the national buprenorphine peer mentorship support group for palliative and hospice providers and has contributed to several book chapters and manuscripts on addiction and serious illness.