Looking forward to 2021, we hope to have back some legislation leftover from the 2020 session. Several legislators who have been good friends to CSAM have termed out, so there will be new faces in Sacramento to get to know. We expect to have a bill on Safe Injection Sites again. We got a similar bill to Governor Brown’s desk several years ago, but he did not sign it. CSAM expects to co-sponsor this bill and provide legislative support in committees.

As Chair of the Education Committee for the past seven years, each year has been its own exciting ride, with CSAM Education program as my dopamine and epinephrine. That said, 2020 was a ride beyond all others. The complete re-tooling of the yearly conference to a virtual format included re-negotiating our previous contract with the hotel followed by massive behind-the-scenes reworking of many essentials such as the fee and honorarium structure, securing two host web platforms, flipping to entirely virtual publicity, and training all planners and speakers to this new web-based format. We also pushed out the dates of the conference and spread the Board Exam Study Track, Pre-conference workshops and the main plenary across 3 weeks instead of the usual 4 days. Dr. Cynthia Chatterjee, this year’s conference chair, her Planning Committee, and the administrative staff will go down in CSAM history for their dedicated and tireless work under unprecedented circumstances. Please take a moment to thank them in person when we are all able to gather again! And, how amazing was the conference?! After months of COVID-19 doldrums, with weeks in the office and no real summer that blurred into a grey haze, the line-up of amazing speakers made me feel alive again! If you missed the conference, you can still experience what CSAM Past-President, Dr. Tim Cermak coined the zing at the CSAM Education Center site where the conference is posted for sale. For those who attended the conference, you can relive “the zing” for free online for the next three years.

With respect to our contract-funded activities, this year was the final of three years of CSAM’s participation in the California Department of Public Health State Opioid Response (SOR) Funding as part of a multi-organizational effort to increase services in the state for those with opioid use disorder (OUD) and reduce overdose deaths. Our role has been to host two webinars for “spoke” clinicians ( and here and here); to re-write the CSAM Guidelines for Opioid Treatment Programs (here); and, through our sister organization Medical Education and Research Foundation (MERF), to offer group learning intensives (MERF MATES) to cohorts of clinician learners for three years. Our involvement in this project has been a win-win situation benefitting the state, the people of California and CSAM. As a participant, UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP) measured elements of how impactful our education is. Look at this link for a short summary of UCLA’s outcome data comparing a sample group of “spoke” clinicians who participated in either MERF MATES or the conference plenary versus a sample group who did not participate in terms of outcomes such as practice habits and attitudes (here).

Where does CSAM Education go from here? I expect that this will be a year when volunteerism will drop off due to increased demands of work and family, so part of the answer will be determined by physician members with interest in quality education stepping forward to volunteer. If you would like to get involved, please send an e-mail to Executive Director, Kim Andosca. COVID permitting, we are looking at the feasibility of a hybrid Review Course conference in 2021 with options of virtual and on-site activities in San Diego August 31-September 3rd. We will continue to offer board preparation activities for those who plan to sit for the exam as part of the Practice Pathway, which has been extended to 2025.