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Treating Addiction in Primary Care

With Dr. Ihuoma Chukwueke

Stories to Solutions

Interview Recorded On: March 20,2026
A woman came in for a hand injury. Nothing about the visit pointed anywhere else. Dr. Ihuoma Chukwueke asked about her social history anyway, and the conversation opened onto her drinking and the family she had watched it move through. The hand became secondary. Fifteen minutes became thirty-five, and the woman started treatment that day.
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A year earlier, that visit would have ended differently. Dr. Chukwueke would have written a referral and hoped it held, knowing the wait to see an addiction specialist runs three months and that readiness rarely survives it. She could see the pain in front of her and had no way to answer it. She had trained outside the United States, spent her service years in communities where people had nothing, and built a career around prevention and root causes, and still the referral was all she had. The math explains why. Roughly 3,000 addiction specialists nationwide against 48 million Americans who meet the criteria for a substance use disorder.
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Then a colleague suggested a training program she almost skipped. In March she started counting. Two patients a day, five days a week, every week since, each one carrying a history she would have walked past before. She used to call herself empathetic. Now she says compassionate, because the difference is having something to offer.
Interview Recorded on: March 20,2026

A woman came in for a hand injury. Nothing about the visit pointed anywhere else. Dr. Ihuoma Chukwueke asked about her social history anyway, and the conversation opened onto her drinking and the family she had watched it move through. The hand became secondary. Fifteen minutes became thirty-five, and the woman started treatment that day.
‍
A year earlier, that visit would have ended differently. Dr. Chukwueke would have written a referral and hoped it held, knowing the wait to see an addiction specialist runs three months and that readiness rarely survives it. She could see the pain in front of her and had no way to answer it. She had trained outside the United States, spent her service years in communities where people had nothing, and built a career around prevention and root causes, and still the referral was all she had. The math explains why. Roughly 3,000 addiction specialists nationwide against 48 million Americans who meet the criteria for a substance use disorder.
‍
Then a colleague suggested a training program she almost skipped. In March she started counting. Two patients a day, five days a week, every week since, each one carrying a history she would have walked past before. She used to call herself empathetic. Now she says compassionate, because the difference is having something to offer.
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Links to Solutions
Dig Deeper -  Dr. Chukwueke works the social history into every visit now, even when the patient came in for something unrelated. She learned to quantify rather than accept a vague answer, because a patient who says they drink a little often has no idea where heavy drinking begins. If you do not know what you are looking for, you cannot find it.
Root Cause Care - Board certified in lifestyle medicine, Dr. Chukwueke treats the brain and the body as one system rather than separate referrals. Diabetes and blood pressure do not come under control when substance use and untreated mental illness are still running underneath them. She looks for what is driving the condition instead of adding another medication on top of it.
No One Walks Alone - Isolation both feeds addiction and follows from it, and Dr. Chukwueke can now explain to patients what is happening in the brain that makes it so hard to stop. That changed what she can say outside the clinic too. In her own congregation, where stigma keeps people silent, she tells them she sees them and that help exists.
Meet Our Guest
Dr. Ihuoma Chukwueke
Ihuoma Chukwueke, MD, DrPH , FAAFP, DipACLM is a family physician at SAC HEALTH and Asist. Prof LLU School of Medicine. She completed her medical training outside the United States, then served in underserved communities where she saw firsthand how little stood between people and preventable illness. That work led her to a master's degree in public health with a focus on global health, followed by a doctorate in public health centered on chronic disease and preventive care, which she completed alongside and after her family medicine residency in the United States. She is board certified in lifestyle medicine and recently completed addiction medicine training for primary care providers through TNT Fellowships at UC Irvine. Throughout her career she has practiced in under-resourced communities, where clinician shortages leave patients without access even when providers are present. She works from the premise that mental health, physical health, and social wellbeing cannot be separated, and works to help patients reach whole health and live longer, healthier lives.
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