Physicians Hall Front

MCW-led project to address opioid use disorder earns funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Academic and community partners from the Milwaukee PROMPT: Prevention of Opioid Misuse through Peer Training project discussed local efforts to promote veterans' health on Tuesday, December 19, 2017. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) invited Dryhootch – a veteran serving organization founded in Milwaukee – and MCW to participate in a recorded video conference to discuss Milwaukee PROMPT's efforts to address and prevent opioid use disorder. The Milwaukee PROMPT project uses a community engaged research (CEnR) framework which emphasizes community stakeholder input in all phases of the research project – from concept development to reporting of results. Community members' voices will be especially highlighted during the video conference, with several military veterans participating on the panel.

"Military veterans' perspectives are central to the community engaged research process," said Syed Ahmed, MD, MPH, DrPH, senior associate dean for community engagement and professor of family and community medicine at MCW and the project's principal investigator and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) clinical scholar. "Their lived experiences and insights help to inform our work so that the research is truly bi-directional."

"We are glad to be a partner in this research project that goes beyond research to actual action," said Bob Curry, Founder and President of Dryhootch. "There is a great deal of enthusiasm about the peer mentoring model, and I want fellow veterans to share their experiences with this approach. I think we all have a lot to learn and an opportunity to apply that new knowledge."

MCW project partners were joined by Washington DC call participants Richard Baum, Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Laurence Meyer, MD, Chief Officer Specialty Care Services at Veteran Health Administration, and Peter Gaumond, ONDCP Senior Policy Analyst. The group completed the video conference in the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Learning Center. A filmed recording of the conversation will be packaged for local and national dissemination.

This project is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars leadership development program, which funds teams of clinicians from different disciplines who collaborate to address a problem in their community.