Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. Today, access to skilled nursing facilities for people with substance

use disorders.

Sally Friedman is the senior vice president of legal advocacy at the Legal Action Center,

which fights discrimination against people with substance use disorders.

Recently, she and her team reached a historic settlement in North Carolina

on behalf of a man denied entry to a skilled nursing facility because of his substance use disorder.

She speaks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the case in her client, who is anonymous, and is referred

to throughout this episode as John Doe. Let's listen. Sally Friedman, thank you so much for joining

me in Public Health on call. It's my pleasure. Nice to be here today. I wonder if you might tell us a little bit about

yourself and the Legal Action Center. Sure. So I am the Senior Vice President of Legal Advocacy at the

Legal Action Center. We're a national nonprofit organization that uses legal and policy strategies

to expand access to substance use disorder care and advocate for a health

rather than a punitive approach to substance use disorder and HIV and to people who've been

involved with the criminal legal system. So how do cases come to your attention?

All kinds of ways. We get a lot of referrals from health and social service providers.

People find us on the internet.

And sometimes we work with legal organizations around the country who identify cases and call us for our help to help them.

Is that the case with Mr. Joe?

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