- Center on Health Equity & Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Dr Frank James on Improving Treatment for Addiction
Improving treatment for addiction means first recognizing that addiction is a chronic disease and also understanding that relapse is part of the disease process, explained Frank James, MD, JD, of American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Improving treatment for addiction means first recognizing that addiction is a chronic disease and also understanding that relapse is part of the disease process, explained Frank James, MD, JD, of American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Transcript (slightly modified)
How can health systems and practices improve treatment for patients with addiction?
We have to first recognize that it is a chronic disease. It’s not a moral disease, it’s not a disease that measures someone’s efforts or their desire to get better—it really is a medical disease. We do have evidence-based care and evidence-based treatments that work. So, we have to make sure that all of our models are based on a chronic disease model.
People often say that if you relapse then the treatment didn’t work; we realize that relapse is a part of the disease process. But the important thing is: how do we treat people who do relapse that we don’t pass judgement on them, we make sure that they’re welcome to come back to treatment, that they’re still engaged? And how do we change the treatment afterwards to make sure that what didn’t work before that we can improve on that?
So really, we have to look at this as a chronic disease with evidence-based treatments for a specific population that has specific needs, and then we need to engage them.
In VERIFY, Rusfertide Spares Most Patients With PV a Phlebotomy for 32 Weeks, Improves QOL
June 3rd 2025Adding rusfertide to standard of care more than doubled the share of patients with polycythemia vera (PV) who did not meet criteria for a phlebotomy, according to data from the VERIFY trial.
Read More
The Importance of Examining and Preventing Atrial Fibrillation
August 29th 2023At this year’s American Society for Preventive Cardiology Congress on CVD Prevention, Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, ScM, delivered the Honorary Fellow Award Lecture, “The Imperative to Focus on the Prevention of Atrial Fibrillation,” as the recipient of this year’s Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology award.
Listen
Depth of Responses, PFS in Transplant-Ineligible Patients Match Overall Findings in CEPHEUS
June 2nd 2025Quadruplet therapy is now the accepted standard for patients newly diagnosed with myeloma who are ineligible for transplant; there is debate whether all newly diagnosed patients should have this regimen.
Read More
Promoting Equity in Public Health: Policy, Investment, and Community Engagement Solutions
June 28th 2022On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Georges C. Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, on the core takeaways of his keynote session at AHIP 2022 on public health policy and other solutions to promote equitable health and well-being.
Listen
Multicancer Detection Assays Remain Largely Elusive for Early-Stage Disease Detection
June 1st 2025Multicancer early detection tests are revolutionizing cancer screening by using liquid biopsies to screen for multiple cancers from a single blood sample, enhancing patient outcomes by identifying cancers earlier.
Read More
