The Buprenorphine Prescribing Support Program for Rural Primary Care

Berkely Franz, PhD
Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine

ABSTRACT:
Buprenorphine is a critical tool to prevent overdose and infectious disease transmission in people with opioid use disorder, but it is difficult to access in rural areas. A promising solution is to engage rural primary care professionals. But the willingness of primary care professionals to prescribe this medication presents a vexing implementation science challenge—fewer than 8% of PCPs have ever prescribed buprenorphine. Stigma is a well-accepted prescribing barrier, but few implementation studies have focused on measuring and addressing the different types of stigma that matter for implementation. To address these barriers, we developed, iterated, refined, and pilot tested a brief, online stigma-reduction intervention that pairs clinical training on buprenorphine with exposure to 1) other rural PCPs who prescribe buprenorphine and 2) patients who received buprenorphine and are in sustained recovery. The Buprenorphine Prescribing Support Program (BPSP) is paired with a booster module and long-term prescribing mentorship. In this presentation, we will present the data that informed the development of the Buprenorphine Prescribing Support Program and results from a pilot clinical trial. Our long-term goal is a brief, effective stigma-reduction program that can be easily scaled to encourage widespread, appropriate buprenorphine use in rural primary care.