Top Addiction Expert to Lead OSI's National Initiative to Close the Drug Treatment Gap

BALTIMORE—A top national addiction expert will head a new national initiative that the Open Society Institute is launching to help close the country’s drug addiction treatment gap, enabling more Americans who need drug addiction treatment to get it.

Victor Capoccia, who led the addiction prevention and treatment team at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and who previously ran a Massachusetts substance-abuse agency, will lead the new initiative, supported by $10 million from philanthropist George Soros to ensure that more Americans have access to drug addiction treatment.

More than 22.2 million Americans suffer from addiction or dependence to alcohol and drugs, according to the most recent national survey on drug use published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA). More than 80 percent of Americans who need help are unable to get addiction treatment, either due to lack of health insurance, inadequate insurance, or lack of treatment slots in communities.

The $10 million initiative will seek to close the treatment gap by underwriting local and regional education and advocacy efforts across the country to expand programs and health insurance for the uninsured. The goal is to expand comprehensive treatment systems and to improve the quality of treatment. The effort will borrow lessons from the highly successful treatment model in Baltimore.

“I have been encouraged by the success Baltimore has had in making treatment more widely accessible so that individuals and families can receive the help they need to lead healthy, productive lives,” said Soros, founder of the Open Society Institute. “Now we have the opportunity to address the issue nationally, to call attention to the short-sighted allocation of public funds, leading to a huge gap in the availability of drug addiction treatment for people without adequate insurance.”

Prior to joining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2001, Capoccia was president and CEO of CAB Health and Recovery Services, Inc., a community-based provider of inpatient, residential, outpatient, prevention and related health services in the alcohol and drug addiction field. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Community-Based Drug Treatment and chairman of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s National Treatment Plan workgroup on Improving Treatment Systems. Capoccia previously was the director of Community Health Services for Boston’s Health and Hospitals Department. There, he directed the city health department’s expansion of prenatal outreach, emergency medical services, HIV prevention and addiction treatment efforts.

Capoccia will oversee the implementation of the new initiative, which will be based in Baltimore. OSI expects to announce later this year the process by which localities will be able to apply for grants.

The new national effort will build on Baltimore’s example, in which OSI-Baltimore has provided substantial funding to strengthen the city’s public drug addiction treatment system, managed by the quasi-public Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems (BSAS). Since 1998, Baltimore has made it a priority to build an expanded drug treatment system and has mobilized broad public support for drug treatment among city, state and private funders. As a result, the city has increased significantly the capacity of its public drug treatment system. Funding for the treatment system increased from $20.3 million in 1997 to $52.9 million in 2005, and the number of people receiving drug treatment in publicly-funded programs increased from 18,449 in 1997 to 28,672 in 2005.

Despite that expansion, thousands of Baltimore residents still need treatment, and local advocates continue their efforts to secure additional funding so that ultimately treatment on demand becomes a reality.

“We are thrilled to have someone of Victor Capoccia’s caliber launch this important initiative to make drug addiction treatment more accessible in the United States,” said Diana Morris, director of OSI-Baltimore. “He brings a vision and a network of resources to this difficult challenge.”

Capoccia has served as an associate professor in community planning and organization at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. A graduate of Boston College, he holds master's degrees in social work and city planning and a doctorate in social policy from the Florence Heller Graduate School of Social Welfare at Brandeis University.

Soros announced his $10 million commitment last June during a major conference in Baltimore about successful drug addiction treatment strategies. The conference, called “Cities on the Right Track: Building Public Drug Treatment Systems,” was sponsored by OSI-Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the City of Baltimore. Among the participants were then-Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, and Providence Mayor David Cicilline.

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