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MATTERS at Beyond Addiction Symposium

By November 24, 2025No Comments

Thank you to the Times Union for highlighting Dr. Lynch’s keynote address for the Beyond Addiction Symposium. We are proud to serve as a resource for organizations serving individuals with opioid use disorder.

Read the Times Union Article

Beyond Addiction: A Prescription for Progress Symposium was hosted by the University at Albany and brought together various community leaders from multiple sectors. This conference aims to brainstorm ways to break down silos and build bridges to resources for substance use disorder across different industries. As the keynote speaker, emergency medicine physician Dr. Joshua Lynch highlighted the MATTERS program as a solution for linking people with opioid use disorder (OUD) to resources for recovery.

Dr. Lynch founded the MATTERS program in 2016 to help bridge people with OUD to high-quality, stigma-free treatment and resources within their own community. With its electronic referral platform, MATTERS efficiently links people with OUD to an outpatient treatment organization of their choice in as little as 3 minutes. The referral process automatically provides patients with wraparound support services, including free transportation for their follow-up appointment, a medication voucher for the uninsured, and an optional peer support referral. Initially, the program primarily focused on connecting people to treatment from the emergency department; however, as the program expanded, the MATTERS team learned that this “warm hand-off” was also needed in other environments.

Since its inception, MATTERS has expanded to facilitate referrals from almost anywhere: community-based organizations, places of worship, or even the back of an ambulance. This expansion exemplifies the importance of cross-sector collaboration in order to effectively address OUD. At the Beyond Addiction Symposium, Dr. Lynch also highlighted the importance of rapid access to support services.

MATTERS prioritizes rapid access to medication for addiction treatment (MAT), such as buprenorphine, commonly referred to by the brand name Suboxone. Its referral process takes less than 5 minutes, and individuals can select follow-up appointments as soon as the next business day. Immediate connection to treatment and support is vital to patient support. During his talk, Dr. Lynch highlighted the need for rapid support: “Not weeks. We know weeks are way too long and often end in a horrible outcome. We just want to make getting help simple, human, and stigma-free.”

Dr. Lynch also highlighted the MATTERS Network mobile app as a resource for quick support at your fingertips. The MATTERS mobile app connects individuals and organizations to all of its services, including its rapid referral platform, telemedicine evaluations, and harm reduction supply order forms.

Thank you to Prescription for Progress and the University at Albany for having Dr. Lynch as your keynote speaker for the Beyond Addiction Symposium! To learn more about this event, click here to read the Times Union article about the event.

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