Addiction medicine in the time of COVID-19: An overview of the 2020 Joint Scientific Annual Conference of the International Society of Addiction Medicine and Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine.

For years, Substance Abuse has annually published a communication regarding the annual conference of the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM). These pieces have highlighted the important events of the conference and the work of the organization, as reflected in part by selected abstracts from the conference. This editorial communicates the events of the 2020 conference, the third to be held in conjunction with the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) and the first virtual conference. The conference was attended by over 800 participants and covered a wide range of topics, including addiction medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges of not being able to meet physically in Victoria, British Columbia as had been planned, the virtual event provided an opportunity to share current information in order to help advance prevention, treatment, policy and public helath efforts relating to addressing addictions and helping those impacted by these often devastating conditions.

Addressing a rapidly changing service landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic: Creation of the Oregon substance use disorder resource collaborative.

Following the rising crisis of COVID-19 and the Oregon governor's stay-at-home orders, members of the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) inpatient addiction consult service recognized that local addiction treatment and recovery organizations were operating at limited capacity. As a result, discharge planning, patient access to local community-based treatment, and safety-net programming were affected. Given structural and intersectional risk vulnerabilities of people with substance use disorders (SUDs), the OHSU members felt that COVID-19 would disproportionately impact chronically marginalized members of our community. These inequities inspired the formation of the Oregon substance use disorder resources collaborative (ORSUD) led by four medical students. ORSUD's mission is to support the efforts of local safety-net organizations that and front-line providers who serve chronically marginalized community members in the midst of the global pandemic. We operationalized our mission through: 1) collecting and disseminating operational and capacity changes in local addiction and harm reduction services to the broader treatment community, and 2) identifying and addressing immediate resource needs for local safety-net programs. Our program uses a real-time public-facing document to collate local programmatic updates and general community resources. COVID-19 disproportionately burdens people with SUDs; thus, ORSUD exists to support programs serving people with SUDs and will continue to evolve to meet their needs and the needs of those who serve them.