Thank you Robert Lubran for your tireless advocacy for Medically Assisted Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder. Your accomplishments exemplify the notion that slow and steady wins the race. We appreciate your taking the time to educate us and our audience on the back story of MAT.
My interest is in advancing the treatment of substance use disorders. Accessing treatment for many people is a difficult challenge because of the limited availability of treatment providers, lack of insurance coverage, inadequate information about treatment effectiveness, and stigma against the disease of addiction.
I retired after 39 years of federal service with the Veterans Administration and 26 years at the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, SAMHSA, where I headed the Division of Pharmacologic Therapies under the direction of Westley Clark, MD, JD, MPH. Now I am a consultant on the use of medications for opioid use disorder. I chair the Board of Danya Institute, an organization that operates SAMHSA grants. I am a Board member of the National Alliance for Medication Assisted Recovery and Stop Stigma Now. I co-chair the Education Committee of the Maryland/DC Society of Addiction Medicine. In 1974 I established a methadone treatment program at the Jefferson County Center on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in Steubenville, OH.
http://www.stopstigmanow.org/
https://namarecovery.org/#:~:text=NAMA%20Recovery%20is%20an%20organization,places%20in%20the%20United%20States.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-lubran-15915912/