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By Michele Carroll
More than 20 million people in the United States were diagnosed with a substance use disorder (SUD) in 2019, but only 10% of those people received treatment. In 2021, an estimated 107,000 people died from drug overdoses, while an estimated 95,000 people die each year from alcohol-related causes, making it the third leading cause of preventable death in the US.
USC’s Institute of Addiction Sciences (IAS) aims to revolutionize the way we talk about, treat and prevent substance use through a new Master of Addiction Sciences (MAS), the first degree of its kind offered at a major university, combining pharmaceuticals, medicine and social work together. The new program, which recently opened enrollment for fall 2023, is an interdisciplinary curricular partnership between USC’s Alfred E. Mann College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck College of Social Work and the Keck School of Medicine. from the USC Department of Population Sciences and Public Health.
“We hope that the students who graduate from our program will be able to elevate the field and truly implement transformative change in the nature of addiction treatment in this country,” said Jennifer Lewis, Suzanne Teaching Associate Professor Dworak-Peck. School of Social Work and one of the collaborators in the preparation of the study plan for the MAS degree. “We must all recognize the complexity of addiction. None of us holds the key to solving this tremendous societal problem alone. The key is to work together to make an impact.”
Break down barriers between disciplines
Addiction treatment, like most of the health care system, is largely based on an isolated structure of specialists who each treat their own aspect of a patient’s addiction using only the tools of their discipline. The Master of Science in Addiction aims to create a new model of an integrated system of care that fuses science-based disciplines, providing professionals with the ability to deliver treatment and prevention together for greater impact and greater patient satisfaction , while working closely with researchers to explore emerging scientific developments.(…Read more)
[ad_2]Source: The new master’s degree in addiction sciences aims to revolutionize the treatment of addictions