November 2022, Corinne Beaugard, a doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW), lead two presentations at the annual conference for the Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance Use and Addiction (AMERSA), a non-profit professional organization that aims to improve health and well-being through interdisciplinary leadership in substance use education, research, clinical care and policy.

Her first session was an oral presentation on findings of a review of literature on the effect of race concordance (shared racial identity) in addiction treatment for Black patients. Contributors to the project, which was housed at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction, included BUSSW’s Prof. Christina Lee and doctoral student Daniel Do (SSW’13, SPH’14). The project seeks to improve health care delivery and outcomes for people with substance use disorders, particularly Black individuals.

Beaugard also presented a poster about privacy and confidentiality for overdose survivors receiving outreach from public health public safety teams in Massachusetts. Based on a study examining the management of information related to overdoses, her presentation highlighted the need for protocols to protect the privacy of overdose survivors.

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