News

In a recent panel discussion at Penn, Leana Wen, MD, MSc, Baltimore City Health Commissioner, spoke about the role of public health in Baltimore and how academic institutions can work with public health departments. I spoke with Dr. Wen before her panel about how policymakers use economic evidence, and how we can make evidence more useful to […]

Pilot grant awardee Dr. Yuhua Bao was invited to present her recent publication, “Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Are Associated with Sustained Reductions in Opioid Prescribing by Physicians,” at the Health Affairs Issue Briefing on Behavioral Health in Washington, D.C on June 7, 2016. Dr. Bao’s presentation centered on her publication in the June 2017 issue of Health Affairs and is […]

As overdose deaths soar, the opioid epidemic has captured the attention of the White House, Congress, and the public. In a recent survey, about 44% of people say that they personally know someone who has been addicted to prescription painkillers. Increasingly, we see addiction as a health problem rather than as a problem to be solved […]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued new regulations for electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) including vaporizers and e-cigarettes. The regulations will raise the purchasing age of ENDS to 18 years to align with cigarettes, require all ENDS manufacturers to submit chemical and manufacturing information for FDA review, which will result in new […]

According to a new report from the CDC, in 2014 one person died from hepatitis C (HCV) every 27 minutes, totaling 19,659 Americans in one year. The number of people dying from HCV surpassed the total number of deaths from 60 other infectious diseases combined, including HIV. Although lifesaving, the high cost of current treatments for […]

Kit Delgado, MD, MS Dr. Delgado’s pilot grant will assess physician-level variability in opioid drug prescribing practices for six specific diagnoses across multiple specialties. Dr. Delgrado will use the Optum Cliniformatics DataMart national private insurance claims database to estimate excess prescription opioids prescribed by state and nationally, and calculate the resulting excess cost to the […]

CHERISH director Dr. Bruce Schackman presented at the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) Annual Scientific Meeting on April 12, 2016. The CTN is a NIDA-funded multi-site research project to determine the effectiveness of behavioral, pharmacological, and integrated treatment interventions across a broad range of community-based treatment settings and diversified patient populations. Dr. Schackman’s presentation […]

Dr. Alysse Wurcel is an infectious disease specialist and faculty member at Tufts University School of Medicine with a focus in HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) infection whose research interests closely align with her clinical work. Dr. Wurcel’s research is focused on the treatment of HCV in people who inject drugs (PWID), people in the criminal […]

Dr. McCollister is an Associate Professor and Health Economist in the Department Public Health Sciences at the University Of Miami Miller School Of Medicine. She is the Co-Director of the CHERISH Methodology Core. This interview discusses her interest in substance use health economics and her most recent publication “Cost Effectiveness analysis of a continuing care […]

Karen Lasser, MD, MPH Dr. Lasser’s pilot grant proposes to evaluate economic and health outcomes for a primary care-based HCV treatment program in a patient-centered medical home. The treatment model is based on the chronic care model including a multidisciplinary team with physician, nursing, social worker, pharmacy technician and pharmacist. The team works together to […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently released an announcement outlining funding priorities for health economics research. The announcement confirms that health economics methods can be instrumental in promoting the NIH mission to improve health and is an integral part of the interdisciplinary science that NIH supports. It goes on to clarify that NIH will prioritize […]

There are more deaths in the US from opioids than from any other unintentional injury–one person died every 30 minutes from an opioid analgesic overdose in the US in 2014. The experience of living with opioid use is harmful both for the opioid user and for his or her spouse. A recent study published in the journal Addiction quantified […]