News

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 […]

One key strategy in reducing deaths from the opioid epidemic is to improve access to existing evidence-based treatments. Two new economic studies by CHERISH Investigators Drs. Sean Murphy, Kathryn McCollister, and Bruce Schackman can help providers, patients, and payers sort through alternative pharmacotherapies to prevent opioid relapse. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved […]

Katherine Wen is a doctoral student in the Department of Policy Analysis at Cornell University. Ms. Wen is working with CHERISH Research Affiliate and Cycle 1 Pilot Grant recipient, Dr. Yuhua Bao, to assess the effects of state policies and practices aimed at improving prescriber use of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) on opioid prescriptions […]

Despite little evidence, some commentators and policymakers have argued that Medicaid expansion has fueled the opioid epidemic by increasing access to prescription opioids. But a growing number of studies refute this theory, and instead suggest that Medicaid expansion reduces mortality from drug overdoses and increases access to drug treatment. The latest such evidence comes from LDI Fellows Paula Chatterjee and Atheendar Venkataramani, who analyzed […]

A recent study in Health Affairs by CHERISH Research Affiliate Dr. Yuhua Bao and CHERISH investigators Dr. Zachary Meisel and Dr. Bruce Schackman examined the impact of prescription drug monitoring program policies on high-risk opioid prescriptions. Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) are statewide databases of controlled substances dispensed at retail pharmacies. Currently, all states and Washington D.C. except Missouri […]

The opioid epidemic carries with it another epidemic, this one of infants born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), stemming from in utero exposure to opioids. NAS is characterized by withdrawal symptoms such as tremors, irritability, poor feeding, respiratory distress, and seizures.  In a recent day-long course at Penn sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services […]

As the country faces an unprecedented opioid epidemic, there’s an active national conversation about how inappropriate prescribing contributes to chronic opioid use, misuse, and addiction. Evidence is rapidly evolving to inform the policy debate, especially regarding best practices for prescribing in acutely painful conditions, like an injury or surgery, but the evidence is less clear […]

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) will collaborate with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to initiate the HEALing Communities Study as part of the National Institute of Health HEAL initiative. The HEALing Communities study is a multi-site national research effort that aims to develop and implement evidence-based interventions to prevent and treat […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative in spring 2018. This trans-NIH initiative will provide an additional $500 million in funding. The HEAL initiative will target two priority areas for research: to improve treatments for opioid misuse and addiction and to enhance pain management. The initiative will […]

A Penn LDI-Shatterproof Collaboration The University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) has received a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), in partnership with Shatterproof, to study the logistics and policies related to the public and private insurance industry’s coverage of opioid use disorder treatment. LDI is Penn’s hub of […]

Hospital-based consultation services that link inpatients with opioid use disorders to treatment offer a unique opportunity to narrow the treatment gap that results in only a minority of individuals with opioid use disorders receiving evidence-based treatment.  Dr. Jennifer McNeely recently received R01 funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study the Consult for […]

CHERISH investigators recently published findings and lessons learned from the implementation of CHERISH’s nationwide consultation service. The CHERISH Consultation Service is free to researchers, regardless of affiliation, whose work aligns with CHERISH’s mission and who would like to incorporate an economic analysis into their research. Interested researchers complete and submit a consultation request form online and are subsequently connected […]