**Training Medical Professionals in Adolescent SBIRT**

**Boston Children’s Hospital**

**Program Description**

1. The SBIRT program at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) was designed with a goal of providing SBIRT training to training nurses, social workers, and sub-specialty clinicians that care for adolescents. In order to improve and expand medical professional use of SBIRT for adolescents we are adapting previously developed curriculum materials to address the specific needs of each discipline. Each year, we will train four distinct cohorts of students: Pediatric Nurse Practitioner students at Northeastern University’s Bouve’ School of Nursing, Graduate Social Work students at the Simmons School of Social Work, fellows in the Leadership in Adolescent Health (LeAH) Fellowship at BCH, and faculty and fellows in the Division of Developmental Medicine at BCH. At each of these training sites, we will be training current students, as well as faculty and field preceptors. Additionally, we will be training approximately 300 school nurses through the Massachusetts School Nurses Association Summer Institute. Trained faculty will have the opportunity to integrate training materials into their core classroom materials, to help ensure sustainability past the duration of the program. Through a combination of didactic courses, “hands-on” skills building, supervised clinical practice, and interprofessional training, trainees will expand on their clinical mastery as well as their abilities to work across disciplines.  

2. **Special/Unique Features:**

**Focus on Adolescents:**The program at Boston Children’s Hospital has a specific focus on adolescent substance use and SBIRT. We have focused on adolescent SBIRT because adolescents are at high risk for substance use and related problems, and because patients in this group are beginning to establish healthcare related norms that they will carry through their lives. 

**Brief Treatment:** We have incorporated a focus on Brief Treatment into the training curriculum for some of our providers, giving them skills to move past the initial brief intervention, and provide more concrete treatment and therapy, within the parameters of a larger treatment visit. Because access to treatment is so often a limiting factor for adolescents with problems related to substance use, this training will allow providers to address these problems on a more in-depth level.

**Interdisciplinary Training:** As the healthcare system moves towards a medical home model, integration of mental and behavioral health services is vitally important. In addition to improving general clinical knowledge of SBIRT skills, we are working with trainees to overcome both practical and policy constraints that limit the integration of SBIRT into the medical setting. By bringing together learners from different disciplines we hope to further identify barriers to widespread adaptation of adolescent SBIRT, and provide skills and guidance for navigating constraints in bringing SBIRT skills into practice.

3. N/A (website will be launched in Spring 2014)

4. **Project Directors:**

Sharon Levy, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

300 Longwood Avenue

Boston, MA 02115

sharon.levy@childrens.harvard.edu

857-218-4308

Elissa Weitzman, MSc, ScD

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

300 Longwood Avenue

Boston, MA 02115

elissa.weitzman@childrens.harvard.edu

617-355-3538