Request for Proposals –

The Graduate Medical Education Consortium of Southwest Virginia has proposed a collection of essays to McFarland Press. Titled Healing Ourselves, with a tentative subtitle along the lines of Physicians Respond to the Opioid Crisis in Appalachia or Healthcare Providers tell their stories of Appalachia’s Opioid Epidemic.

We are looking for a wide range of approaches to the topic, with the intent that these individual narratives should tell together the larger story of what is happening in the region. If you are actively involved in treating pain and/or addiction in Appalachia, we would like to hear from you. We are particularly interested in stories that focus on reflective awareness or solution-driven activity. If you’ve been part of a working solution, tell us about it.

We understand that many substances continue to play a role in Appalachia’s addiction story; your proposed story should not focus on other substances to the exclusion of opioids.

Please send a one-page write-up of your approach to telling a piece of the big story on opioids/substance abuse in Appalachia. Do not put your name on this page but please include why you are well-positioned to write this unique piece.

On a separate page, please give us your name, profession and titles, geographic location, work location (are you based out of a hospital, private or free clinic, college or university, etc.) and why you are interested in writing for this collection. Please include e-mail and phone contact details.

McFarland is primarily an academic publisher; we are looking for writers who can address their topic with narrative skill and present data or complicated terms in language appealing to readers overloaded with faceless statistics. Tell us a story. Tell us YOUR story.

We look forward to reading your proposals on Monday, Sept. 9. Email them to director@swvagmec.com