This course has been updated to better reflect the current themes surrounding Substance use and Public Health. If you are already enrolled in this version of the course, you are allowed to complete it and obtain a certificate or register for the new course version on this link.
This course provides information on substance use and public health. It addresses the burden of substance use disorders (SUD), the impact of prevention strategies, interventions and control programs, and ethical research practices in SUD care to ensure effective positive health outcomes. By the end of this course, students will be able to use screening tools to assess substance use disorders and identify prevention and treatment protocols to reduce the impact of substance use disorders within a population.
The SUD and Public Health course is sponsored by the Annenberg Physician Training Program. Like all NextGenU.org courses, it is competency-based; competencies were developed in collaboration with subject matter experts, and take into consideration Tap 21 Addiction Counseling Competencies from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which benchmark how curricula, educational programs, and professional standards are measured in the U.S. SUD treatment field, the Principles of General Care (GPC) for people with Mental, Neurological and Substance Use Disorders (MNS) conditions developed by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP), and the WHO and United Nations (UN) International Standards for the Treatment of Drug Use Disorders.
The course uses learning resources from accredited, world-class organizations such as the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization. The course was designed by Hugo Rojas, MD, MSc; Juan Jose Pemintel, MD; Leohrandra Graham, MSc; Margaret Niles, PhD, MEd, DipID; Valeria Reynolds, MD, MPH; Pablo Baldiviezo, MD.
For publications on NextGenU.org’s courses’ efficacy, see “A Novel Integration of Online and Flipped Classroom Instructional Models in Public Health Higher Education,” (2014), BMC Medical Education, “Building Public Health Capacity through Online Global Learning,” (2018), Open Praxis, or on NextGenU.org’s publication page. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of future updates, new courses, and to be part of our community.
There are five Substance Use Disorder (SUD) modules to complete, which include:
- Module 1: Introduction to SUD in Public Health
- Module 2: Identifying SUD
- Module 3: SUD Interventions and Control
- Module 4: SUD Prevention Strategies
- Module 5: Ethics and Research in SUD Care
The completion time for this course is estimated to be 125 hours which includes 63 hours of didactics and curated resources and 62 hours of work participating in activities and quizzes to assist the student in the synthesis of the materials. This course
is equivalent to 3 credit hours.
Upon completion of the training (5 modules), participants will need to complete a final exam”. The final exam will be designed so that participants can have three opportunities to answer correctly until the required score of 70% or higher is obtained.
At the end of each lesson, there is a practice quiz of ten to fifteen (10-15) multiple-choice questions. At the end of the course, after you’ve completed each lesson, quiz, and learning activity, you’ll have access to a final exam of forty multiple-choice
questions, and a chance to evaluate this course. Once you’ve passed that last test, you will be able to download a certificate of completion from NextGenU.org and our course’s co-sponsoring organization the Annenberg Physician Training Program. We
keep all of your personal information confidential, never sell any of your information, and only use anonymized data for research purposes, and we are also happy to report your testing information and share your work with anyone (your school, employer,
etc.) at your request.
Engaging with this Course:
You may browse this course for free to learn for your personal enrichment; there are no requirements. To register for this course, it is required that learners have obtained a college-level/bachelor's degree.
To obtain a certificate, a learner must successfully complete:
- all the reading requirements,
- all quizzes and pass with 70% having unlimited attempts,
- all case studies,
- the final exam with a minimum of 70% and a maximum of 3 attempts, and
- the self and course evaluation forms.
NextGenU.org is happy to provide your institution with
- a link to and description of the course training, so they can see all its components, including the cosponsoring universities and other professional organization cosponsors;
- your grade on the final exam;
- your work products (e.g. case study activities), and any other required or optional shared materials that you produce and authorize to share with them;
- your evaluations -- course, and self-assessments;
- a copy of your certificate of completion, with the co-sponsoring universities and other organizations listed.
To obtain a degree, NextGenU.org co-sponsors degree programs with institutional partners. To obtain a full degree co-sponsored with NextGenU.org, registrants must be enrolled in a degree program as a student of a NextGenU.org institutional partner. If
you think that your institution might be interested in offering a degree with NextGenU.org contact us.
We hope that you will find this a rewarding learning experience, and we count on your assessment and feedback to help us improve this training for future students.
Here are the next steps to take the course for credit:
- Complete the registration form.
- Take the pre-test.
- Begin the course with Module One. In each lesson, read the description, complete all required readings and any required activity, and take the corresponding quizzes.
This course meets nationally approved standards of education developed for the addiction/substance use disorders counseling profession. This course's participants are assured that the continuing education (CE) credits provided will be accepted toward national credentialing by the NAADAC Certification Commission for Addiction Professionals (NCC AP), as well as by many of the individual state licensing/certification bodies in the addiction and other helping professions.
*This course is sponsored in part by the Annenberg Physician Training Program: Abstinence-based Recovery from Addictive Disease.