Understanding Addiction

Courses in this program

• Understanding Addiction
  This module focuses on the fundamentals regarding the nature of addiction including the epidemiology of opioid use disorder, the chronic nature of OUD, the differences between dependence and use disorders, and the neurobiology behind addiction. It also looks at the changing perceptions and current stigmas surrounding opioid use disorders.


• Identification, Counseling, and Treatment of OUD
  This module focuses on best practices and treatment of OUD with different medications in addition to psychosocial approaches. It also addresses co-occurring psychiatric disorders as well as preventing and treating overdose.


• Collaborative Care Approaches for the Management of OUD
  This module focuses on strategies that include health care provider and health care team roles and regulatory requirements, patient evaluation and education, and transitioning between medications. It also addresses potential misuse, relapse, and safer use, as well as caring for pregnant women and other special populations with OUD.

Understanding Addiction

With the CDC reporting that 46 people die in the US each day from an overdose of painkillers creating a nationwide epidemic of opioid substance use disorders. Opioid prescriptions have quadrupled since 1999, and so have opioid overdose deaths.

Aimed at addressing this overwhelming educational need, the Collaborative Education in Substance Abuse (CESA) program is as an innovative online educational initiative that addresses substance substance use disorders, including, opioid use disorders (OUD) and will provide comprehensive information on defining the difference between physical dependence versus opioid use disorder, analyze societal stigmas regarding opioid use disorders. Other topics will include: Motivational interviewing, buprenorphine use for OUD treatment and strategies to monitor and treat special populations.

This is one of three courses that comprise the Opioid Use Disorder Education Program (OUDEP), an innovative interprofessional continuing education program produced by Harvard Medical School (HMS). This project was funded in part with federal funds from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. HHSN271201500070C. This course is intended for nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, physicians, social workers, and other health care providers collaborating to treat patients with substance use disorders.

Understanding Addiction focuses on the fundamentals regarding the nature of addiction including: the epidemiology of opioid use disorder, the chronic nature of OUD, the differences between dependence and use disorders, and the neurobiology behind addiction. This course also focuses on the changing perceptions and current stigmas surrounding opioid use disorder.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Recognize opioid use disorder as a chronic, relapsing, and treatable disease
• Describe basic neuroscience of opioid use disorder
• Compare and contrast physical dependence versus opioid use disorder
• Recognize opioid use disorder epidemiology, and the prevalence of co-occurring psychiatric disorders
• Examine the importance of reducing related societal stigmas and biases around opioid use disorder, and reducing negative consequences of opioid use

Target Audience

This course is intended for nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, physicians, social workers, and other health care providers collaborating to treat patients with substance use disorders.

Course Director

Sarah Wakeman, MD, FASAM
Understanding Addiction
Assistant Professor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Medical Director of the Substance Use Disorder Initiative and the Addiction Consult Team
Co-Chair of the Opioid Task Force, Massachusetts General Hospital
Clinical Lead for the Partners Healthcare Substance Use Disorder Initiative

Course Outline

Understanding Addiction is organized as follows:

Welcome to the Course

Understanding Addiction covers the following eight units:

1. Epidemiology of Substance Use Disorders
2. Treating Substance Use Disorder As A Chronic Disease
3. The DSM-5 and the Process of Diagnosing Opioid Use Disorders
4. The Neuroscience of Addiction
5. Physical Dependence vs. Opioid Use Disorder
6. Co-Occurring Psychiatric Disorders: Prevalence, Screening, and Diagnosis
7. Reducing Negative Consequences: From Philosophy to Practice
8. Substance Use Disorder, Stigma, and Bias: Why We Should Care and What We Should Do

Posttest and Evaluation