Health Promotion Advocates in three urban hospitals and five community health centers in the greater-Boston area are using an innovative approach to screen patients for substance abuse. MASBIRT is an approach that has made it possible for medical professionals in Massachusetts to do screening for substance abuse in real time. MASBIRT has screened over 130,000 patients for unhealthy substance use in the greater Boston area, and has helped more than 22,500 patients who required and received a brief intervention for substance abuse between 2007 and 2010. Dr. Daniel Alford is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and is on staff in the Section of General Internal Medicine, Clinical Addiction Research and Education Unit at Boston Medical Center (BMC). He is certified in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. He is the program director of the Boston University Medical Center’s Addiction Medicine Residency Program and president-elect of the Association of Medical Education in Research inSubstance Abuse (AMERSA). He is the medical director of the Massachusetts Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral and Treatment (MASBIRT) program and the BMC Office-based Opioid Treatment program. He is a national mentor for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Physician Clinical Support Systems (PCSS) for buprenorphine and clinical expert for the PCSS for methadone in the treatment of pain and opioid addiction. He co-chairs the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) committees on Opioid Agonist Treatment and Buprenorphine Training. He directs the NIDA funded Chief Resident Immersion Training Program - Addiction Medicine: Improving Clinical and Teaching Skills for Generalists and is co-investigator for the NIDA funded Massachusetts Consortium - Center of Excellence for Physician Information on Prescription Drug Abuse. He is on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Prescription Monitoring Program Advisory Council.