naadac COVID-19

Dear NAADAC Affiliates,

The evolving Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic is undoubtedly affecting all of us, both personally and professionally. As we all deal with the rapidly changing information available, we encourage you to be thoughtful and follow guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other health authorities in determining the policies and practices that you employ during this time.

NAADAC continues to place the highest priority on the health, safety, and wellbeing of our staff, while protecting the continuity of programs and essential functions. To that end, NAADAC is transitioning to encourage the majority of our employees to work remotely and advising those in the office to take precautions and extra measures to prevent the spread of germs and employ social distancing tactics. We are logistically preparing for our staff to be entirely remote in the days and weeks to come based on the best information available to us. We have also issued enhanced workplace policies that will be revised regularly as the situation develops.

As you are aware, NAADAC currently has conferences and events planned, including our 2020 Northwest Conference in Seattle, WA in June and our NAADAC 2020 Annual Conference and Hill Day in Washington, DC in October. At this time, we have not canceled or rescheduled either event, however, we are closely monitoring the situation and will be making decisions in the days to come based on the information provided by the CDC, WHO, and local health authorities. We encourage you to take a look at your affiliate’s schedule of events and cancel, reschedule, or reformat events as appropriate based on the available information. If and when you do cancel or change an event, please let us know so that we can update our records and website accordingly.

We have also begun to compile resources about the Coronavirus and, more specifically, about SUD in relation to the Coronavirus, on our website. You can find these resources at https://www.naadac.org/covid-19-resources.

Due to the speed in which events are unfolding and new information is available, we will reevaluate our policies on a daily basis going forward and will continue to communicate with our staff regularly as the situation changes. We encourage you to do the same.

If you find that you need support or would like some additional resources, please reach out to me (cynthia@naadac.org), Jessica Gleason (jgleason@naadac.org), our Deputy Director, and Kristin Hamilton (khamilton@naadac.org), our Director of Communications. We want to support each one of you, your affiliate, and those you serve as we all navigate our way through this.

Together, we can, and do, make a difference!

Blessings,

Cynthia Moreno Tuohy, BSW, NCAC II, CDC III, SAP

Effective Immediately, and for a period of 30 days from March 17, ALL TESTING SERVICES ARE HALTED throughout the United States and Canada.

Within the past 24 hours, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have issued updated guidance on measures to be taken to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 disease.  In particular, the CDC lowered the number of people that should be able to congregate in the same space from 50 to 10 in the United States. 

Given this new guidance, Prometric has determined it is necessary and appropriate to close our test centers in the United States and Canada for a period of 30 days, starting today on March 17.  This dramatic step is necessary in order to comply with this new federal guidance as well as to further protect the health and well-being of the individual test takers and the staff that provide services at each of our testing locations.  We anticipate re-opening our test centers effective April 16, however, please note that the specific date will be dependent on circumstances that are changing daily.

Operations teams are actively reaching out to individuals with testing appointments today and throughout the closure period, in an effort to prevent them from unnecessarily appearing at the testing centers.  We will be taking measures to reschedule those impacted appointments into a new date after the planned re-opening and will be communicating that information to the impacted individuals.  We will work closely with the test takers to find new appointment dates and times that work for their schedules, and we will be waiving any rescheduling fees.

If you have any questions, or testing support requirements, kindly reply to this email and we will assist you as quickly as possible.

Stay Healthy,

IC&RC