October 6, 2010
UPDATE - latest plans for the AATOD conference since the Registration Brochure was published earlier this year. This information has not been previously published.

Saturday – Open Board Meeting
AATOD’s Open Board Meeting will convene on Saturday evening, October 23, 2010. Since this meeting is open to the public, it will give participants a better understanding of AATOD’s leading policy initiatives for 2010-2011. We are delighted that Dr. H. Westley Clark and other CSAT staff will join us during this Board meeting, sharing SAMHSA’s/CSAT’s leading policy initiatives for the field.

Opening Plenary Session
All speakers are confirmed for the Opening Plenary Session, which will feature Susan McKnight (Conference Chair and Program Coordinator, Lake County Health Department), and Theodora Binion-Taylor, who serves as the Director of the Illinois Division of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, in addition to Dr. H. Westley Clark, who serves as the Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)/SAMHSA, and Congressman Danny Davis, who is the representative from the 7th District of the House of Representatives in Chicago .

Tuesday Morning Plenary Session
This Plenary Session will be devoted to Treating Opioid Addiction in the Criminal Justice System, and the challenges that we all face in expanding access to the use of medications in such jurisdictions. We are pleased that Melody Heaps will moderate this session in her role as President Emeritus of Treatment Alternatives for a Safer Community (TASC), in addition to Mr. West Huddleston, who is the President of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), Scott Chavez, the Vice President of the National Commission of Correctional Health Care, and Dawn Bushma-Gavac, who serves as the Senior Probation Officer in the Chicago Office.

Closing Plenary Session
We are extremely pleased to announce that Illinois State Senator Mattie Hunter will be a featured Closing Speaker on Wednesday, October 27, 2010. Senator Hunter is also a certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor and Prevention Specialist, having worked for 18 years in our field prior to being elected to the Illinois State Senate in 2003. We are pleased to report that Dr. Wilson Compton, who serves as the Director of Epidemiology for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will provide the Closing Keynote Plenary presentation on Wednesday, October 27, 2010, focusing on New Medications to Treat Chronic Opioid Addiction, in addition to National Health Care Reform and its impact on treating addiction as well.

EUROPAD Session
Please click here to view the EUROPAD program, which will be featured during Sunday afternoon from 1:00pm-5:00pm. As you know, EUROPAD is AATOD’s policy partner in forming the World Federation for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence. We continue to be grateful for the leadership of Dr. Icro Maremmani and his associates in developing this Pre-Conference Session.

Vietnamese Pre-Conference Session
We are also pleased that a significant delegation from Vietnam will be joining our conference under the sponsorship of PEPFAR-VN. The Vietnamese government is expanding access to opioid treatment services in their country, and will report on this activity on Sunday morning, October 24, 2010, prior to the EUROPAD afternoon session.

I will continue to provide more updates in the next several weeks and look forward to seeing many of you in Chicago.

September 23, 2010
We are extending the Standard Registration rate until the end of Friday, October 8, 2010. We are doing this to accommodate a number of individuals who have decided over the past weekend to come to our conference. If you do plan to attend, please register at the standard published registration fees.

Additionally, we advise you to make your hotel reservations at the Hilton Chicago immediately.

I am writing as we make our final preparations for AATOD’s National Conference, which will convene at the Hilton Chicago Hotel between October 23-27, 2010. Many people in our field have been receiving updates about the conference planning activities throughout the summer. People have also been encouraged to register for this conference and book hotel rooms to beat the published deadlines; The AATOD Board of Directors, conference planners, and I recognize that getting to the conference is a challenge against the backdrop of the current economy. We also think that the registration fees are reasonable given the breadth and the quality of the entire program.

AATOD and its partners have worked for more than a quarter of a century to create valuable educational events at these conferences as a means of fulfilling the objective of educating our associates about the most current clinical and policy developments in our field with the ultimate interest of expanding access to quality addiction treatment services. We have worked steadily with our EUROPAD partners for 20 years in forming the World Federation for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence (WFTOD) in 2007 as a further means of expanding such initiatives.

These conferences have also celebrated the extraordinary accomplishments of many of our esteemed colleagues through the Awards Banquet Ceremony, which bestows the Nyswander/Dole Awards. The Banquet Ceremony also recognizes outstanding contributions to our field through patient advocates, and the “Friend of the Field” Award to those who have made an enormous difference to our work.

A careful review of the conference program also reflects the leading challenges facing our field at the present time, including Improving Methadone Safety, Best Practices, Risk Reduction, Benzodiazepine Abuse, An Increased Focus on Spirituality and Recovery, Stigma Reduction and Improving Access and Retention in the Treatment System. All of the Pre-Conference Sessions, Workshop topics, Plenaries, Hot Topic Roundtable Discussions and Poster sessions contribute to the achievement of our mutual objectives. In our collective view, we are at a critical point in the development of our treatment system. There are greater state and federal legislative challenges to our system of care against the backdrop of significant methadone deaths in our country. While it has been demonstrated that the majority of these deaths lie outside the scope of OTP practices, there is still reason to be concerned about any methadone overdose death. This is why we have focused on induction practices, which are discussed during the Clinical Training Session at the Pre-Conference event in Chicago .

Since its inception, AATOD has worked with every stakeholder, who has an interest in the work of our field. This includes all federal, state and municipal policy officials in addition to treatment providers, patient advocacy groups, research entities and corporate supporters. We believe that this conference offers a rare and valuable opportunity to our associates every 18 months to gather under one roof and learn all that can be learned about current treatment and policy issues and how to best prepare for future challenges. There is no other single event that is able to achieve such goals with any degree of consistency in such a condensed amount of time.

In our judgment, the elements of this conference have been carefully constructed to help prepare our field to treat our patients safely and effectively. We have also worked to increase access to treatment for opioid addiction in the criminal justice session, which is featured in the Middle Plenary on the Tuesday morning during the conference. There are other presentations during this conference, which provide increased guidance on how to work with members of the criminal justice system.

The bottom line is that participating at this conference helps improve staff knowledge about treatment, which is critical for the success of treating patients, as has been determined by researchers throughout our history. The more skilled and compassionate our staff, the better patient care will be, and the bigger the impact on the field of opioid treatment.

People need to be in Chicago for the AATOD Conference to help them with the work in treating our patients. It is money well spent! Thank you for considering this event, and I hope to see you in Chicago in two months. Our website has been updated with specific, easy-to-access information about each and every conference event, and you should feel free to communicate with us directly with any questions.

Sincerely yours,

Mark
Mark W. Parrino, M.P.A.