CHERISH Welcomes Pilot Grant Recipients to Advance the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders, HCV, and HIV
Meet the ninth cohort of early-career investigators from the states of California, Texas, and Washington. CHERISH awarded each investigator up to $20,000 for a pilot study that focuses on conducting health economics research in substance use, hepatitis C virus (HCV), and HIV. This year, CHERISH also encouraged applicants to integrate drug overdose prevention, the syndemics […]
Economic benefits of substance use disorder treatment: A systematic literature review of economic evaluation studies from 2003 to 2021
The economic burden of substance use disorder (SUD) is significant. It encompasses clinical and societal costs such as health care and social services, criminal justice resources, loss of productivity, and premature mortality, and is estimated to cost more than $700 billion per year in the United States. To understand the gravity of these economic costs, […]
Penn LDI & CHERISH Launch New Online Communications Training Course for Academic Researchers
The University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), which since 2019 has been offering the Amplify[at] LDI in-person communications course to help academic researchers translate and disseminate their findings more widely, has developed and just launched a free, online course providing an introduction to the same topics. The new training resource is […]
Dr. Yuhua Bao Receives Grants to Study Implications of Opioid and Other Drug Policies on People with Cancer
Dr. Yuhua Bao, professor of population health sciences in the Division of Health Policy and Economics, has received grants from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to assess the implications of opioid and other drug policies for patients receiving active cancer treatments, long-term survivors of cancer, and cancer patients with advanced disease. “Both studies are motivated by the […]
Sean M. Murphy and Chelsea L. Shover Receive Inaugural NIH HEAL Director’s Award and Trailblazer Award
The 4th Annual NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative Investigator Meeting took place on February 22, 2023. HEAL-funded investigators and key stakeholders gathered in Bethesda, MD, to share research findings and identify new opportunities for pain and opioid use disorder research. HEAL Director Dr. Rebecca Baker also presented the inaugural NIH HEAL Initiative Director’s Awards for […]
Will States and Counties Spend Their National Opioid Settlements Effectively?
As $54 billion in National Opioid Settlement funds begin moving out toward states, counties, and municipalities, there is widespread concern among health authorities that the legal victory does not become a repeat of the 1998 mega-billion-dollar Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement fiasco in which most states used the money for just about everything except tobacco cessation […]
New Federal Rules That Lower Barriers to Opioid Care Could Save Thousands of Lives
The two main medications that treat opioid use in the United States reduce overdose deaths by 50%. Yet fewer than one in 10 people with opioid use disorder (OUD) can access this kind of medical protocol, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Fortunately, a new law and a new federal regulation […]
Budget Impact Tool for the Incorporation of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder into Jail/Prison Facilities
Despite evidence that medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), namely methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone, provided at the point of incarceration improve the well-being of the individual and the public, financial and administrative limitations in jail/prison healthcare often serve as barriers to this recommended first-line treatment for OUD. In fact, evidence indicates that more than 80% […]
Catching Up with Pilot Grant Recipient: Rachel Epstein
Rachel Epstein is a clinician-scientist with demonstrated experience in analyzing large datasets to inform hepatitis C (HCV), HIV, and substance use disorder interventions. A CHERISH pilot grantee in 2019, she worked closely with her co-investigators Benjamin Linas, CHERISH Population Data and Modeling Core director, and Shashi Kapadia, a CHERISH Research Affiliate and an infectious diseases physician at Weill […]
Addressing Statistical Issues Encountered in Conducting Prospective Economic Evaluations Alongside Clinical Trials
Conducting an economic evaluation alongside a randomized clinical trial provides valuable information for clinicians, insurers, and policy stakeholders. Integrating an economic evaluation within a trial provides researchers the opportunity to collect patient-level data at multiple time points on both cost and effectiveness outcomes, and to measure the comparative impact of treatments on these outcomes while […]
A Catch-Up on Promising Efforts to Mitigate the Opioid Crisis
For the last 20 years or so, the U.S. has seen a significant increase in opioid and drug overdoses overall. And while there was a slight leveling before the pandemic, “we’ve seen huge increases since COVID-19,” said Margaret Lowenstein, an LDI Senior Fellow, addiction medicine physician, and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of […]
Engaging with People with Lived Experiences in OUD Modeling Research
Drug overdose deaths continue to rise in the United States and Canada, with the risks for greater opioid use sharply increasing in Mexico. As modelers, we know simulation modeling is a valuable tool that can inform policies and interventions to prevent overdose deaths and reduce related harms including drug overdose, HIV, and hepatitis C virus […]
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