White House Launches Website to Simplify Search for Addiction Treatment Facilities

The Trump administration has launched a new website designed to make it easier for Americans to find reputable addiction treatment options.

The White House unveiled the website, FindTreatment.gov, on Wednesday.

The tool helps users sort through a directory of addiction treatment providers that is kept by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA). It includes more than 13,000 state-licensed facilities.

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Those facilities can be filtered by the type of service they provide, as well as payment options, age, language, access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and other factors.

The website is yet another effort by the government to curb the country’s opioid epidemic. In 2017 alone, more than 47,000 Americans died from drug overdoses involving opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.

In the recent past, finding reputable treatment has been easier said than done. Both California and Florida came under fire in 2017 for their drug treatment industries, which were rife with fraud, abuse and overdoses. 

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Since then, states and federal governments have taken action to further regulate the field and the businesses operating within it. 

“Too often people will just type into a search bar, ‘need treatment,’” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, said in announcing the website. “And for years, if not decades, there has been an insufficient response to such a search.”

The federal site was designed based on more than 300 user feedback responses and 60 long-form interviews with people in active recovery, as well as their family members and medical providers. 

A language expert helped create the content for the site to ensure descriptions of services were easy to understand and to provide “destigmatizing” explanations for different treatments options. 

Along with the website, the White House also announced $1.8 billion in new grants to help fight the opioid epidemic.