Addiction is one of the biggest public health crises in our country, but health care providers receive minimal training to address it. Most health care providers do not know what to do when a patient has a substance use disorder and are unequipped to identify, treat and manage a common life-threatening disease that is both preventable and treatable.

Health care professionals should be trained to treat addiction as they do any other complex disease. At a minimum, prescribers must have a working understanding of addiction before they are permitted to prescribe addictive narcotics.

Ask your members of Congress to cosponsor the Medication Access and Training Expansion (MATE) Act, which would require prescribers to undergo training on substance use disorder before receiving or renewing their license to prescribe controlled substances. This would help integrate addiction care with the mainstream health care system, ensuring patients and families can turn to their trusted health care provider when seeking advice or treatment for addiction, just as they would for any other disease.

People and families struggling with substance use and addiction encounter a variety of systemic challenges throughout their journey, which is why we created a new section of our website called "Help Us Change the Story of Addiction." The site features personal stories that bring these structural barriers to life, including Bill Williams’s story about a pediatrician’s office being entirely unprepared to handle his son’s overdose. Each story offers visitors an opportunity to advocate for policy change by signing an action alert or by sharing similar stories from their own journey.

Let’s change the story of addiction today.