Role of the National Health Service Corps in Delivering Substance Use Disorder Treatment in Underserved Communities.

Abstract

To help address the opioid epidemic, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration expanded the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) to include two new loan repayment programs (LRPs)-the Substance Use Disorder LRP and the Rural Community LRP-to supplement the existing standard LRP. In this article, the authors aimed to describe the role of these NHSC programs in addressing workforce shortages and providing substance use disorder treatment, including for opioid use disorder, in underserved areas. Administrative data on NHSC clinician locations were merged with county-level data to characterize the communities served by NHSC clinicians. Primary data from surveys and key informant interviews with NHSC site administrators (N=9) and clinicians (N=9) were used to describe changes in NHSC clinician service delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The NHSC LRP expansion increased the number of clinicians providing behavioral health treatment in underserved areas, especially rural areas. A majority of NHSC sites surveyed have increased their provision of substance use disorder treatment since the COVID-19 pandemic began. This article demonstrates the valuable role of these NHSC programs as resources that policy makers can use to mitigate the challenges of health care workforce shortages and burnout.