No Safe Dose for That First Opioid Prescription
LDI Senior Fellows Zack Meisel, Benjamin Sun, and colleagues have a striking and sobering chart in a recent Annals of Emergency Medicine article on initial opioid prescriptions in the emergency department. They tracked how many “opioid-naïve” patients (i.e., those without a record of opioid use in the previous year) had persistent or high-risk opioid prescription use in the subsequent […]
Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder Lowers Overdose Risk in Commercially Insured Individuals
“Medications for opioid use disorder saves lives.” That’s the title and conclusion of a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, based on a review of the scientific evidence. In a new study in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, CHERISH investigators Jake Morgan, Bruce Schackman and Benjamin Linas add to this evidence base by […]
Angélica Meinhofer, Margaret Lowenstein and Rachel Epstein Awarded Fifth Cycle of CHERISH Pilot Grant Funding
Angélica Meinhofer, PhD Dr. Angélica Meinhofer is an Instructor in the Department of Healthcare Policy & Research at Weill Cornell Medical College. She completed her doctorate in Economics at Brown University and previously worked as a Research Economist at RTI International’s Behavioral Health Services, Policy and Economics Research Program where she designed and conducted evaluations […]
Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and the Opioid Crisis: Paying Attention to Social Context
As you likely continue to read in your local news or experience in your community, the United States is in the midst of a deadly drug overdose and addiction crisis. In fact, overdoses claimed the lives of 70,000 individuals in 2017—more than two-thirds of those overdoses were linked to opioids. While drug overdoses disproportionately affect young adults, there […]
NIH funds HEALing Communities Study in Four States
On April 18, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) together with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced research sites in four states will receive funding as part of the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative HEALing Communities Study. Each state will engage stakeholders and researchers across 15 communities in their […]
Using the 340B Drug Pricing Program to Support Primary Care-Based Hepatitis C Treatment in a Safety-Net Hospital Patient-Centered Medical Home
Over 2 million people in the US had chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection during 2013- 2016, and HCV remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Expanding HCV treatment in primary care would improve treatment access and follow-up but is resource intensive, requiring significant staff support. Using a budget impact analysis, a new study […]
Starting Opioid Use Disorder Treatment in the Emergency Department: Physician-reported barriers and facilitators
Every day, we hear about the staggering toll of the opioid overdose crisis. This is particularly salient in Philadelphia, which has one of the highest overdose death rates among major U.S. cities. Despite effective medications for opioid use disorder, such as buprenorphine and methadone, few people receive treatment. The ongoing challenge is to expand access to these lifesaving treatments […]
Strengthening Partnerships Between Substance Use Researchers and Policy Makers
Comprehensive evidence-based policy is crucial in combatting the substance use crisis. CHERISH Investigators from the University of Pennsylvania Leonard Davis Institute Zachary Meisel, Julia Mitchell, Daniel Polsky and Janet Weiner published a new study in Substance Abuse Treatment Prevention and Policy that describes how eighteen policy makers involved in the delivery of health services engage with substance […]
Naloxone Sales Likely to Increase after Switch to Over-the-Counter Status
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist rescue medication that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, and thus a critical tool to prevent fatal opioid overdoses. CHERISH Investigators Drs. Sean Murphy, Jake Morgan, and Bruce Schackman, and CHERISH staff member Philip Jeng, MS predicted pharmacy sales following conversion of naloxone to over-the-counter (OTC) in a new […]
Opioids and Hepatitis C: How OxyContin Fed a New Epidemic
Purdue Pharma’s 2010 reformulation of OxyContin as an abuse-resistant pill was supposed to be a breakthrough in battling the burgeoning opioid epidemic. Purdue executives and policymakers touted the reformulation as a way to dampen the supply of abusable drugs, thereby reducing opioid addiction and death. Nearly a decade later, it appears that the policy had several serious […]
Criminal Justice Measures for Economic Data Harmonization in Substance Use Disorder Research
The intersection of criminal justice-involved populations and people who use substances makes criminal justice outcomes particularly significant for estimating the economic impact of substance use disorder interventions. New National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) HEAL initiative funding opportunities in response to the opioid crisis include integrated studies that will develop, test, and validate evidence-based approaches to preventing […]
Why Deaths Continue to Rise in the Opioid Epidemic
Late last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that more than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017, a 9.6% increase from 2016. Deaths continue to soar, even as states and health systems implement policies to curb the overprescribing of opioids that led to the epidemic in the first place. It’s hard […]
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