2022 OIPP Promising Practice and Champion Awards
2022 Promising Practice Award Winner
OSU Wexner Medical Center-Substance Abuse Treatment, Education & Prevention Program (STEPP)
The Ohio State University (OSU) Wexner Medical Center created a program that provides evidence-based strategies to reduce injury for mothers and their infants. STEPP expanded to serve women in the post-partum period to address the incidence of relapse and maternal overdose result in maternal mortality. STEPP includes patient-centered, trauma informed, individualized medical and behavioral healthcare to mothers that identify a history of substance use. With the use of innovative harm-reduction techniques, STEPP provides infectious disease screening and individualized treatment for medication opiate use disorder. The STEPP program served 150 women per year and provided care for 30 patients weekly. This program focused on innovative harm reduction techniques and collaborated with partners like Project DAWN, fentanyl strips and needle exchange programs, Maryhaven with weekly addiction and recovery skills groups, and Talbot Hall and Harding Hospital to provide individual psychiatry, psychotherapy, and trauma services.
2022 Champion Award Winner
Bijan W. Ketabchi, MD, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center- Pediatric Firearm Safety & Suicide Prevention
Bijan Ketabchi, MD, has been a part of the Ohio Injury Prevention Partnership, Child Injury Action Group for the past two years. He has focused his efforts on many different aspects of firearm safety and suicide prevention including: examining what barriers pediatricians face when discussing firearm safety; providing firearm safety information; assessing the impact of lethal means counseling and distribution of gun locks to families of children with mental health concerns; securing funding to purchase gun locks; counseling families on firearm safety; and engagement in community outreach, medical education, and advocacy. Moving forward Dr. Ketabchi would like to expand upon this topic by getting additional funding for resources, widespread application of firearm safety, and suicide prevention studies and initiatives, and continue advocacy for gun safety legislation.