A new University of New England program aims to train hundreds of health care professionals across rural Maine in opioid response strategies.
The program, called the University of New England Northern Border Rural Workforce, will train both students and people who are already part of the health care work force in rural areas of the state.
Training is sorely needed as communities in Maine continue to see effects from the opioid epidemic, and it can be difficult to get care for opioid use disorder in rural areas as those parts of the state that are “grossly underserved,” according to Devon Sherwood, the project director and a professor in UNE’s pharmacy school.
Students and professionals who become certified will be trained in treatment strategies, including various medication options, as well as how to recognize opioid disorders and talk to patients about these conditions, Sherwood said.
The program, which is planned to launch next year, will be the most comprehensive of its kind in Maine, Sherwood added.
The result will hopefully be that “we get more people that are equipped to be able to manage patients that have opioid use disorder,” she said.
Waitlists for opioid and other substance use treatment services in Maine are “extremely long,” said project manager Rebecca Ireland.
“We know that they’re not getting the services or their providers haven’t gotten the training to be able to be comfortable, confident, and effective in talking with them about that and providing care for that disorder,” Ireland said.
Many positions providing these services are vacant, she said, and it can be hard to get training, especially for providers based in rural areas.
With the new training, even health care professionals who don’t specialize in opioid use disorder will “have at least a core basic knowledge and understanding of the issue, how to identify it, how to treat it [and] how to support patients,” she said.
The initiative is set to launch no later than August 2026, Ireland said, but they’re hoping to get it off the ground even earlier.
The training will be incorporated into curricula for all students in UNE’s graduate health programs in pharmacy, psychiatric nurse practitioner, social work, physician assistant and medicine, and the school’s undergraduate nursing and social work programs, Sherwood said.
It will also include an online program for professionals working with various partner organizations across the state, including the Penobscot Community Health Care system, Northern Light Health, and other hospitals serving rural areas.
The training is split into different components offering both basic and advanced certification, so providers “can take one piece of it that’s most fitting for them or their role,” Ireland said.
This means that the training can be useful even for people working in non-clinical roles at health care organizations who might otherwise interact with patients who have opioid use disorder, Ireland said, adding that the program aims to “meet them where they’re at.”
The initiative is also partnering with multiple health care education organizations, including the Maine Medical Association.
“By reducing training barriers and aligning statewide partners, the program will have a meaningful, measurable impact on patient safety and community health,” said Dr. James Jarvis, the association’s president, adding that the new training will help prevent overdose deaths in the state.
The program is funded by a four-year, $1.6 million grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration that was awarded in September, Sherwood said.
But Sherwood noted that her team wants to make the program sustainable even after those four years, which she expects can happen because of the flexibility of the course’s online platform.
Over those first four years, the program will train hundreds of students and health care employees, according to the university.
After students are trained, “We’re encouraging them to actually go to these rural sites to practice,” Sherwood said. “Hopefully once they get in there and they’ve got this training, they could stay there, and it increases the ability to improve our numbers in the workforce.”
