The 9th annual Academic & Health Policy Conference on Correctional Health will feature an implementation science track on substance abuse treatment for incarcerated individuals at release when it convenes March 16 to 18 in Baltimore.
The conference is hosted by the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health (ACCJH), which is supported by UMass Medical School, and co-hosted by George Mason University.
“Delivering health care to justice-involved individuals, who often have complex medical and behavioral health conditions, can be a challenge for correctional administrators struggling under limited budgets and the rising costs of health care and prescriptions,” said conference founder and co-chair Warren J. Ferguson, MD, vice chair and professor of family medicine & community health at UMass Medical School. “Implementation science is a key method to adapting and adopting evidence-based treatments behind bars.”
Seminars, lectures and peer sessions on such topics as mental health, infectious disease, juvenile justice, aging, substance abuse disorders and re-entry will be included in the two-day conference.
On March 16, four correctional systems will participate in the first Implementation Science Track, which is focusing on medication-assisted substance abuse treatment for incarcerated individuals before and during the transition to release. Dr. Ferguson is principal investigator of two grants from NIDA and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality for a study of the best treatments for substance abuse disorder and hepatitis C in four prisons and jail systems in the United States.
