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Key Takeaways
- New York launched the Center of Excellence for Cannabis Care and Health Equity, the first program in the U.S. to train doctors and public health workers about cannabis.
- The Center aims to provide evidence-based information and support to healthcare providers for better patient conversations about cannabis use.
- It addresses the gap in medical training about cannabis and the need for qualified clinicians to guide patient care.
- The initiative also focuses on health equity, ensuring underrepresented communities benefit from improved access and understanding of cannabis.
- The Center’s success could lead to similar programs in other states as the conversation around cannabis evolves beyond legalization.
NORTH AMERICA, NEW YORK – Last week, New York’s Office of Cannabis Management launched the Center of Excellence for Cannabis Care and Health Equity, the first program of its kind in the country. It trains doctors and public health workers to talk with patients about cannabis using evidence-based education, research, and clinical resources, with a focus on health equity.
For years, the cannabis conversation in this country has centered on one question: should it be legal? New York answered that in 2021. Now the state is asking a more useful question. What happens when a patient walks into a doctor’s office and brings up cannabis?
The Center of Excellence (COE) is now live!
— NYS Office of Cannabis Management (@nys_cannabis) June 26, 2026
The COE connects clinicians with research, technical assistance, and educational resources to support public health practices and frontline clinical care.
Learn more:
🔗 https://t.co/kQxHziPzLx pic.twitter.com/8vjqGNpAul
What is the Center of Excellence for Cannabis Care and Health Equity?
The Center of Excellence is a statewide initiative built to educate healthcare providers and public health professionals about cannabis. The goal is simple: give clinicians trusted, evidence-based information so they can have honest, informed conversations with patients.
The Center grew out of Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2026 State of the State agenda. It serves both New York’s Medical Cannabis Program and the adult-use market, and it works through three connected areas:
- Provider and public health education
- Equitable access and patient navigation across the Medical and Adult-Use Programs
- Population health, surveillance, and research capacity
In plain terms, the Center wants doctors to understand cannabis pharmacology, safety, and how to talk to patients. It also wants to build the research foundation that decades of prohibition never allowed.
Why Does the Medical System Need This?
Here is the gap the Center is trying to fill. Much like all across the United States in state legal programs; millions of New Yorkers use cannabis, including people managing chronic conditions or taking other medications. Yet many patients never mention it to their doctors, and many doctors lack the training to guide that conversation when it happens.
Dr. June Chin, OCM’s chief medical officer, put it bluntly at the launch event. “Dispensaries should not guide patient care,” she said. “Clinicians guide patient care. So this Center ensures that medical providers statewide are prepared to counsel patients safely and effectively using an evidence-based clinical framework.”
Right now, a budtender behind a dispensary counter often fields questions that belong in a doctor’s office. The people asking those questions deserve answers grounded in clinical knowledge, not guesswork.
Chin talked about the problem with three patients who might enter the same hospital on the same day: a child with a severe seizure disorder on a prescription cannabis-based medicine, a toddler being checked after eating a cannabis gummy, and an adult with chronic back pain wondering if a cannabis tincture might help. One word, cannabis, connects all three. It means something completely different in each case. A trained clinician needs to know the difference.
How Prohibition Created a Research Void
A big reason doctors lack good information is that the science was effectively frozen for almost a century. Federal restrictions made cannabis research extremely difficult to conduct, leaving clinicians with thin data on dosing, long-term effects, and safety.
State Sen. Patricia Fahy, who represents the Albany area, spoke about this from personal experience. Her 24-year-old son was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and lost weight quickly during chemotherapy. After her own research, she urged his physicians to explore cannabis to ease his nausea and restore his appetite. What stunned her was discovering that one of the strongest studies on steady, long-term cannabis use dated back to the 1980s.
“I learned the hard way about the void in this country on research,” Fahy said. She pointed to the war on drugs for jailing young men, most of them men of color, and for erasing decades of science that could have answered basic questions about safety and dosing.
That equity thread runs through the whole initiative. OCM has noted that limited access to medical dispensaries disproportionately affects communities of color, which is exactly why “Health Equity” sits in the Center’s name.
Who is behind the Center of Excellence?
The Center is a collaboration between leading academic medical centers, schools of public health, and community partners across New York. Partner institutions include:
- SUNY Upstate Medical University
- Stony Brook Medicine
- Albany Medical Center
- University of Rochester Medical Center
- New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM)
- CUNY School of Public Health
- University at Albany College of Integrated Health Sciences
The Center also works with state agencies, including the Department of Health (DOH), the Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS), and the Office of Mental Health (OMH).
These institutions will take part in a structured pilot program to test educational approaches, strengthen clinician engagement, and develop programs for statewide rollouts.
What Happens Next for the Center of Excellence for Cannabis Care and Health Equity?
The Center is launching as a pilot, not a finished curriculum, and officials were honest about that. OCM has issued a Request for Proposals seeking vendors to build online training for clinicians and pharmacists.
From there, the Center plans to expand grand rounds programs across partner institutions, launch new public education materials with state health agencies, and support studies focused on equitable access and health outcomes.
The timing lines up with movement at the federal level. John Kagia, OCM’s executive director, pointed to the federal effort to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a change that opens the door to the kind of medical research that was blocked for generations. “Today is just the beginning,” he said.
Why This Is the Logical Next Step for Cannabis
Legalization was never the final destination, but rather the starting line. It was the beginning of building a public health framework around cannabis.
That framing gets to the heart of why this matters. Opening dispensaries created access. It did not create understanding. A patient can buy a tincture legally and still have no qualified person to ask whether it interacts with their other medications. The Center of Excellence is the part of legalization that treats cannabis as healthcare rather than just a retail product.
What the Center of Excellence Means for Patients and Providers
If New York gets this right, the change will be quiet. Chin said the Center should not be judged by how many guides it publishes or how many clinicians it trains. The real test is harder to measure: Did the doctor ask a better question? Did the patient feel safe enough to answer honestly?
For patients, that could mean walking into an exam room and getting straight answers instead of awkward silence. For providers, it means having the training to offer those answers with confidence. And for the cannabis movement as a whole, it is proof that the conversation is finally maturing past legalization and into care.
Keep an eye on how the pilot performs. If it works in New York, expect other states to follow, because the research void is a national problem, not a local one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Led by the Office of Cannabis Management, this New York State initiative educates healthcare providers and public health professionals about cannabis. The program offers evidence-based training, clinical resources, and research support to help doctors counsel patients safely. As the first of its kind in the United States, it sets a new standard for cannabis education.
OCM launched the Center on June 25, 2026, at Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York. The initiative was first announced as part of Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2026 State of the State agenda.
The Center is designed for healthcare providers, public health professionals, and researchers. It serves both New York’s Medical Cannabis Program and the adult-use market, helping clinicians understand how cannabis affects health.
No. The Center is built on the opposite idea. As Dr. June Chin stated, dispensaries should not guide patient care, clinicians should. The program exists to make sure trained medical providers are the ones counseling patients.
Not yet. It is launching as a pilot program with partner medical schools and public health programs across the state. OCM has issued a Request for Proposals to build out online clinician and pharmacist training.
