Meharry Medical College

Cheatham County is located ~30 miles from Nashville and is designated as a rural county. Cheatham County is a part of one of three High Impact Areas for opioid use disorder interventions in the state of Tennessee. In 2019, opioid overdose death rates in the county were more than double the state rate. Cheatham had an overdose rate of 78.8 per 100,000 in 2019 compared to the state rate of 38.4 and the national rate of 28.7. This rate has risen even higher in 2020 to 105 per 100,000, the highest in rate in the state in 2020.Further, Cheatham County had no buprenorphine waivered physicians as of 2019, no community health centers, no substance use treatment facilities, and no mental health treatment facilities.Due to both the high rate of overdose and the lack of services, we have chosen to focus our project in Cheatham County. Specifically, we intend to: (1) develop a new medication assisted treatment (MAT) site through our mobile clinic that will serve Cheatham County; (2) increase the opioid and alcohol use disorder treatment workforce in the county; (3) increase community infrastructure to provide medication assisted treatment (MAT); and (4) ensure a sustainable model of MAT delivery through increased insurance enrollment and billing and coding optimization.