PUBPOL 5720

Addiction Medicine Practice and Policy

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

A community-engaged addiction medicine course that draws from experts in the field to address the neurobiology of addiction, risk and protective factors for substance misuse and disorder, barriers to treatment such as stigma, the recovery continuum, and a focus on drug policy and law in historical and contemporary context. Students will work in teams to complete a community engaged project and field trips will be offered. This course is geared toward future clinicians, policy makers, healthcare leaders, data analysts, and engaged citizens who care about human wellbeing and health equity.

Exploratory Studies (CU-CEL)

Last 3 terms offered 2024FA, 2023FA

Learning Outcomes REF-FA25

• Define addiction as a chronic relapsing medical condition.
• Describe the epidemiology of substance use, misuse, and abuse for a given substance (e.g. incidence, prevalence, trends including inequities, costs, and morbidity and mortality).
• Identify and propose solutions to barriers to care such as stigma, structural racism, criminalization of disease, access, lack of medical system integration, etc.
• Justify an appropriate recovery practice or policy across the ecosystem of care (e.g., prevention services, harm reduction, screening, outpatient treatment, inpatient care, detox, etc.).
• Work collaboratively in groups and with a community partner to complete a community-engaged service-learning project.

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