UC San Diego is quietly trying to plug one of San Diego County’s biggest behavioral health gaps with a laptop and a login. The university has rolled out ASCEND, a free, self-paced online training that helps Californians meet the state’s new 80-hour entry requirement for substance use counselors. One of its early success stories is 51-year-old Kyle Medrano, who got sober, completed ASCEND as one of the program’s first graduates, and now works as a registered technician at a treatment facility in Carlsbad.
What ASCEND offers
ASCEND, short for Advancing Substance Use Disorder Counselor Education and Development, is offered through the UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies in partnership with the California Department of Health Care Services. It was built to deliver the 80-hour core competency training the state now requires for first-year counselors, according to UC San Diego Extended Studies.
The free curriculum is fully online and broken into a dozen self-contained courses that cover topics ranging from confidentiality rules to medication-assisted treatment. Trainees pick up digital badges as they finish each module, and program staff offer instructor office hours and email support so new recruits are not left to grind through the material alone.
What the law requires
Assembly Bill 2473, signed into law in 2022, directed the Department of Health Care Services to define core competencies and raise entry-level education requirements for substance use counselors, according to the California Legislature.
The department carried that out through Behavioral Health Information Notice No. 25-029, which established the 80-hour core competency requirement and spelled out that first-year registrants must complete those hours within six months of registration, according to DHCS.
A recruit’s perspective
Medrano told The San Diego Union-Tribune that he enrolled in ASCEND after getting sober and that the coursework helped him move from a general support role into hands-on counseling work. The Union-Tribune also reports that hundreds of Californians have already signed up for the free training, a sign that word is getting around in recovery circles and treatment programs.
Local need is immediate
The local demand helps explain the rush. A 2022 regional behavioral health workforce report estimated San Diego County would need roughly 2,952 additional substance use counselors by 2027, essentially a nearly 3,000-person gap, and projected that the region must add many thousands more behavioral health professionals over the next five years, according to the San Diego Behavioral Health Workforce Report.
Statewide trends are not easing the pressure. Emergency department visits tied to opioids have surged in recent years, and the California Health Care Foundation reports that non-heroin opioid emergency visits tripled from 2019 to 2023, leaving treatment systems to play catch-up.
ASCEND is a stepping stone
Program leaders are careful to say ASCEND is the starting block, not the finish line. The training supplies the required 80-hour foundation, but most California certification pathways still call for several hundred additional classroom hours, roughly 2,080 supervised substance use disorder work hours, and passage of a written exam. Certifying organizations typically give registrants up to five years to hit those milestones, according to certifying agency guidance.
Local planners see ASCEND as a way to feed community training pipelines rather than replace them, and local reporting indicates organizers hope to enroll thousands of entry-level counselors in the coming years so treatment providers are not constantly scrambling for qualified staff.
Legal and regulatory notes
Under AB 2473 and related DHCS guidance, certifying organizations are responsible for verifying that trainees complete the 80-hour core competencies and for reviewing documentation within set timelines. DHCS’s Behavioral Health Information Notice spells out submission, review, and renewal procedures for certifying bodies, which means employers and prospective counselors need to stay on top of both state guidance and their chosen certifying organization’s rules so registration and renewal do not hit bureaucratic snags.
UC San Diego Extended Studies posts application details and eligibility requirements on the ASCEND program page, including the need to prove California residency and to be registered with a state-approved certifying organization. Interested readers can review course structure and application information on UC San Diego’s site and decide whether ASCEND fits into their own path into the substance use counseling field.
