Nevada’s Train, Educate, Adopt, and Collaborate for Healthcare with Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (teachSBIRT), located at the Center for the Application of Substance Abuse Technologies (CASAT), University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), will increase the number of nurses and social workers able to address the needs of persons at risk for SUDs throughout Nevada’s healthcare delivery system by promoting the adoption and sustainable practice of SBIRT. This will be accomplished by adapting SAMHSA’s Required SBIRT Curriculum to include cultural issues specific to frontier/rural states and infusing it into existing courses for the University of Nevada, Reno Schools of Nursing and Social Work, as well as providing trainings for nursing and social work practitioners throughout Nevada.
Project Overview
The teachSBIRT project will represent part of an overall workforce development effort linking early intervention and referral services to specialized community treatment programs, and holds potential significance as a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, collaborative effort to improve and strengthen Nevada’s healthcare system and positively impact Nevadans’ health. This is timely given a recent CDC report that excessive alcohol use is one of the most common risk factors associated with prevalent chronic diseases, and Nevada ranks higher than the national average for risky drinking.