Editor's note: the following excerpt is taken from "For One Rural Community, Fighting Addiction Started With Recruiting The Right Doctor" heard on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, Sunday, December 9, 2018.

The story features Mark Lim, MD, an active member of WISAM/ASAM who has presented at WISAM annual conferences and recently led a session in WISAM's 2018 Webinar Series. He is board certified in both Addiction Medicine and Family Medicine, and serves as the Medical Director of NorthLakes Community Clinic in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Dr. Mark Lim says he is surprised he's here in this 8,000 person port-town on Lake Superior. He'd dreamed of living in a big city since he moved to the U.S. from the Philippines. When he got the call about the job, he was hesitant at first. "I didn't know where that was on a map," he recalls.

But he saw this part of Wisconsin, where the death rate from drug and alcohol abuse is nearly twice as high as the state average, as a place where he could make a difference.

Lim's been board certified in addiction medicine since it was officially recognized as a subspecialty in 2016, but he's been working in the field since about 10 years ago when he started working in an addiction practice in Maine.

He took the Wisconsin job, with one stipulation: He would start a program to address addiction as a whole. His expertise would be just one part of the treatment approach.

"If I'm just going to be the Suboxone doctor I'm not doing the full practice of addiction," Lim says. Read full story.