Maximizing the AACN/NIDA Mentored-Facilitated Training Award

Dr. Deborah S. Finnell is a faculty consultant at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where, until her retirement was a Professor of Nursing. She has specialized in psychiatric mental health and addictions nursing for most her career. She is past president of the International Nurses Society on Addictions and editor of the 2013 edition of the Addictions Nursing Scope and Standards. She also served as chair of the Addictions Nursing Certification Board and former board member of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA). Dr. Finnell continues as the associate editor of AMERSA’s professional journal, Substance Abuse.

Her work related to substance-use related screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment has been funded by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), Centers for Disease Control, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). As a result, substance-related content including Screening, Brief Intervetion, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) has been fully integrated into the nursing curricula at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON), and two online SBIRT and SBI programs, developed with her colleagues and team were launched in 2018. She is currently working on a SAMHSA-funded project to include opioid use-related and safe opioid prescribing content into the Doctor of Nursing Practice curricula at JHSON.

Yovan Gonzalez is a family nurse practitioner working as a primary care provider for Gouverneuer Heatlh, affiliate with the New York City Health and Hospitals system. At Gouverneur, Yovan has led efforts to integrate behavioral health into primary care by participating as a member of the Integrated Care Committee and the Primary Care Behavioral Health Subcommittee. Yovan was o one of the first nurse practitioners at Gouverneur to be waivered to prescribe buprenorphine. At the Roberto Clemente Center, he has focused on providing integrated care at a behavioral health facility whose clients are mainly Hispanic. He has also successfully integrated a buprenorphine clinic and Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) into routine clinical practice.

Yovan is originally from Lima, Peru. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he received his BSN and MSN as family nurse practitioner. Yovan is completing his Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. His DNP scholarly project focuses on increasing nurses’ knowledge in the screening and management of substance use through an online SBIRT program. Yovan is a doctoral fellow of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Minority Fellowship Program and the recipient of the 2018 American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Mentored-Facilitated Training Award. Yovan is also a 2018 American Psychiatric Nurses Association Board of Directors student scholar.