Promoting Addiction Treatment in Medicaid: A Q&A with New Jersey’s Department of Human Services Commissioner Carole Johnson

In this interview, Carole Johnson, Commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Human Services, discusses how she is advancing New Jersey’s strategies to combat the opioid epidemic, with focuses on best practices, robust stakeholder engagement, and cross-agency collaboration.

In 2018, over 3,000 New Jersey residents are believed to have died from drug overdose, and suicides among 10- to 18-year-olds in the state have increased by nearly 50 percent over the past decade. In January 2019, New Jersey announced a multi-faceted OUD strategy that includes enhanced Medicaid reimbursement for providing medication-assisted treatment through an office-based addiction treatment model and the establishment of Centers of Excellence to support community-based clinicians providing addiction treatment.