Regents OK merger plan

Agree to unify community colleges in state by 2023

HARTFORD — Faced with a 2018-19 budget that relies on reserves to stay afloat, the Board of Regents for Higher Education unanimously agreed on Thursday to forge ahead with a community college consolidation plan, though not at full speed.

The so-called Students First plan would now take five years to complete instead of two, but will still lead one Connecticut Community College on 12 separate campuses.

“We can lay the foundation and act like one college before we actually become one college in 2023,” said System President Mark Ojakian, the driving force behind consolidation.

His plan to save money and improve student services suffered a major setback in April when the accrediting body, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, called the plan unrealistic. Instead of changing existing colleges, the plan was creating a entirely

effectiveness of a third medication used to treat opioid dependence — naltrexone — because it didn’t have a large enough sample group using the product.

The NIH study backs up research that’s been done in the past.

In 2015, Dr. Gail D’Onofrio, chairwoman of the department of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, led a study looking at how buprenorphine affected the rate of patient treatment after initial emergency department visits. The study showed that the drug doubled the rate of those still in treatment 30 days after the first visit.

D’Onofrio and colleague Dr. Edward Melnick are working on a project to research widespread implementation of buprenorphine treatment for opioid dependence at the emergency department level. Melnick, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale, did not find anything revolutionary in the new NIH study.

“It’s not a surprise — the efficacy of these medications for opioid use disorder is well-established,” he said.

However, there are still some barriers to the widespread use of buprenorphine and other medications at the emergency department level. One of the main barriers is the relative newness of the treatment, Melnick said.

Indeed, the NIH study found that, in the first year following an overdose, less than one third of patients were provided any medication for opioid dependence. Only 11 percent were given methadone, 17 percent were given buprenorphine and 6 percent were given naltrexone. About 5 percent were given more than one medication.

Opioid addiction is a growing health crisis, nationally and in Connecticut. In 2017, there were 1,038 accidental drug deaths in the state — the highest number since at least 2012. Many of these deaths involved opioids in some way.

The NIH data is valuable, and proves what many health professionals have known for some time, said Andre Newfield, chairman of psychiatry at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media file photo Gateway Community College, in New Haven, is one of 12 in Connecticut that will merge into one college in the next five years.