In response to the overwhelming interest in the SAMHSA Office of Behavioral Health Equity and Justice-Involved (OBHE) webinar by the same name, the NNED organized a virtual roundtable to build on the conversation. New participants and previous attendees were welcomed into this NNED virtual roundtable, where the panelists and participants engaged in conversation to inform community-driven action.
Panelists built on strategies shared in the first session, taking a deeper dive into community-focused, culturally and linguistically-resonant strategies to prevent and treat opioid misuse and addiction in Black and Hispanic/Latinx communities. The new format allowed for panelists to dialogue with each other and provided interactive opportunities for attendees to ask questions of the panelists to help move their conversations and work to end the opioid crisis.
Panelists:
Mary Langley, Ph.D., M.P.H., RN, ICPS
Professor & Director | Morehouse School of Medicine Health Promotion Resource Center
Principal Investigator | Morehouse School of Medicine-Dougherty Alliance for the Prevention of Opioid Use Disorder
Learn More
Dr. Langley is a professor in the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine and the Director of the Health Promotion Resource Center at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Langley has worked extensively in community development in both urban and rural communities.
She is an internationally credentialed prevention specialist (ICPS) and experienced in program development, implementation, and evaluation of prevention programs for youth and families. For more than 30 years, Dr. Langley has worked with both community- and faith-based organizations, helping them to develop prevention programs for youth and families, with a focus on substance abuse and sexual risk avoidance education.
Pierluigi Mancini, Ph.D.
Project Director | National Hispanic and Latino ATTC & PTTC, National Latino Behavioral Health Association (NLBHA)
Founder and Former CEO | Clinic for Education Treatment and Prevention of Addiction (CETPA)
Learn More
Dr. Mancini is the Project Director for the National Hispanic and Latino Addiction Technology Transfer Center and the National Hispanic and Latino Prevention Technology Transfer Center. NLBHA was established to fill a need for a unified national voice for Latino populations in the behavioral health arena and to bring attention to the great disparities that exist in areas of access, utilization, practice-based research, and adequately trained personnel. Both of the centers are part of the National TTC Network, which is an international, multidisciplinary resource for professionals in the addictions treatment, prevention, and recovery services field that was established in 1993 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
With over 30 years of experience in culturally and linguistically appropriate behavioral health treatment and prevention, Dr. Mancini is one of the most sought-after national and international consultants and speakers on the subject of mental health and addiction. His area of expertise is immigrant behavioral health.
Dr. Mancini founded Georgia’s only Latino behavioral health program in 1999 to serve the immigrant population by providing culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health and addiction treatment and prevention services in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Ricardo Cruz, M.D., M.P.H.
Assistant Professor of Medicine | Boston University School of Medicine
Attending Physician | Boston Medical Center
Principal Investigator | Project RECOVER
Learn More
Dr. Cruz is a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center in the Department of Medicine, Section of General Internal Medicine. He is the Principal Investigator of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health-funded Project RECOVER (Referral, Engagement, Coaching, Overdose preVention Education in Recovery), a project that utilizes peer recovery coaches to assist with engagement and retention of individuals with opioid use disorder into treatment and primary care services after completion of acute treatment services (detoxification). In addition, he is a Clinician Educator and part of the Core Faculty of the Internal Medicine Primary Care Training Program at BUSM/BMC. He is in the BUSM Academy of Medical Educators where he teaches medical students during the preclinical doctoring courses with a focus on development of clinical reasoning. He has been a co-investigator on NIAAA and NIDA-funded randomized clinical trials testing medications for alcohol and cocaine use disorders. His interests are in providing primary care and treatment for substance use disorders for disadvantaged populations including racial and ethnic minority communities, specifically, Latinx and individuals with criminal justice involvement.
Suggested Resource:
NNEDShare Post – Strategies to Address the Opioid Epidemic in Black and Hispanic/Latinx Communities