Matt Tierney is ANCC certified as a PMHNP and an ANP, and is also a CARN-AP who additionally holds California licenses an an NP and as a CNS. His roles at APNA have included Past President (2020-2021), Chair of the Addictions Council (2013 -2018), and past services on the LACE Steering Committee, and the Nominations Committee on the National Level.
Hi. My work focuses on improving access to substance use treatment by creating innovative clinical programs and by training clinicians, with a keen focus on reducing the impact of the national opioid epidemic. De-stigmatization and provider empowerment always comprise the heart of my work. I helped found, and then for 13 years directed, the nation’s first clinic dedicated to buprenorphine treatment initiation and stabilization, a program that informs the creation of similar “hub and spoke” models for addictions treatment nationally. That program continues to be nurse-led and operated. For ten years I was teaching faculty for the federally-mandated education programs required to prescribe buprenorphine, training hundreds in this essential treatment modality long before the federal government permitted nurses to prescribe this medication thanks to the 2016 CARA legislation. As past chair of APNA's Addictions Council, I helped develop APNA's free on-line nursing CEUs to address the opioid epidemic. I have long represented APNA as the sole nurse member on the National Academies Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders. I have disseminated addiction treatment education at Universities, community colleges, not-for-profit and public health venues, at conferences and educational forums, and in book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. I am currently a full time NP at San Francisco General Hospital, providing direct opioid treatment services for vulnerable populations in the county's 'safety net' hospital. Prior to this work, I was Medical Director of Inpatient Substance Use Interventions at UCSF Health, and also served as Clinical Director of Substance Use Treatment and Education in the UCSF Office of Population Health.