News

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 […]

Tyler Bartholomew is a doctoral student in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami. Prior to entering the doctoral program, he was the project manager for an HIV and HCV testing, linkage to care, and treatment program at five federally-qualified health centers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as part of his AmeriCorps service. […]

Last month, the American Dental Association (ADA) announced a new policy on opioid prescription. This is the latest in a series of statements issued by the ADA in response to the prominent role of dentistry in the opioid epidemic. In addition to mandatory continuing education and prescription limits, the ADA indicated its support for “dentists […]

Between 1999 and 2015, the annual sales of opioid analgesics in the US quadrupled to about $8 billion dollars. In an effort to address over-prescribing of opioid analgesics, Dr. Marcus Bachhuber recently received a career development award (K-award) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to implement a default opioid prescribing system in the electronic health […]

On March 19, researchers from institutions across the country joined CHERISH leaders Bruce Schackman, Kathryn McCollister, Benjamin Linas and Sean Murphy for a daylong CHERISH introductory training to economic evaluations. Dr. Schackman began the day by introducing CHERISH to the attendees, who represented more than 25 institutions across New England, the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, the South […]

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is one of the leading causes of infectious disease deaths in the United States. Injection drug use is a common route of HCV transmission and the annual number of reported cases continues to rise due to the opioid epidemic. Previous HCV treatment regimens had severe side effects and limited efficacy, but […]

Is it possible that the widespread prescribing of excessive amounts of opioids for C-section and knee arthroscopy patients is responsible for producing a significant number of opioid dependencies? That question is the subject of Perelman School of Medicine postdoctoral researcher Benjamin Ukert‘s (above, left) new pilot project funded by the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for […]

Key Findings Setting a low quantity of opioid tablets as the default option in electronic medical record prescribing orders may “nudge” clinicians to prescribe fewer opioids. When two emergency departments implemented a 10-tablet default instead of a manual entry, the proportion of 10-tablet prescriptions written more than doubled, from 20.6% to 43.3%. Conversely, 20-tablet prescriptions […]

An estimated 13 million people in the US report non-medical use of prescription opioids in the previous year, of whom 2.5 million have opioid use disorders that require treatment. Only 10% of those with an opioid use disorder receive any type of specialty substance use treatment. Even fewer have access to pharmacotherapy including methadone maintenance, buprenorphine, or […]

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a communicable disease that could lead to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma affecting baby boomers and all people who inject drugs (PWID) in particular. There are over 19,000 HCV-related deaths in the United States annually. HCV can be cured using direct-acting antivirals that can also reverse HCV-related liver injury. In 2012, the […]

Using a legislatively-mandated, integrated dataset, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has published its first comprehensive look at the state’s opioid-related overdoses between 2011 and 2015. The dataset was created as part of 2015 “Chapter 55” legislation. It links information on an individual level across diverse state databases, including mental health data, jail and prison data, vital records, substance […]

News and feature stories about the opioid epidemic appear daily in a variety of media outlets. To draw interest, these outlets often using provocative language to describe substance use disorders and those affected by substance use across the country. The 2017 Associated Press Stylebook, however, now encourages journalists and the media to use person-first language such […]