American Board of Preventive Medicine (ABPM) Begins Formal Process to Bring Addiction Medicine into American Board of Medical Specialties as Subspecialty, Available to Diplomates of all ABMS Boards

In February, ABPM sent a required “Letter of Intent” to ABMS announcing the forthcoming submission of an application for the new subspecialty.  This is the first step in a detailed ABMS review process that takes approximately 18 months. Although this process is the responsibility of ABPM as the sponsoring board, the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM) will encourage and support the vital undertaking.

ASAM’s Take
This is a thrilling time to be involved in addiction medicine! We congratulate ABPM in proposing addiction medicine as a new subspecialty within ABMS. ASAM created ABAM in 2007 so that addiction medicine can be an accepted subspecialty by organized medicine and by our nation’s health care system. ASAM recognizes that ABAM will be working closely with ABPM to support submission of the application.  ASAM will also provide whatever support it can.  Acceptance by ABMS will have enormous ramifications for the field of addiction medicine.

What You Can Do
Learn more about becoming board certified at www.abam.net, and about addiction fellowships at www.abamfoundation.org. 

ASAM offers a review course for ABAM Maintenance of Certification Exam, which can be found here.

Learn more about ABAM’s announcement here.