Intern Spotlight: Grace L. Edwards, Jessica Girard, Lyric Harris, and Antara Saha
The Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH) is delighted to welcome four astounding interns this summer: Grace L. Edwards, Jessica Girard, Lyric Harris, and Antara Saha. Setting personal goals to pursue medical journalism, forensic psychiatry, nursing, and a doctoral degree in developmental psychopathology, they applied through […]
Evidence for Supportive Prenatal Substance Use Policies
Increased prevalence of illicit substance use during pregnancy in the past decade has renewed national attention to prenatal substance use policies (PSUPs). Currently, there are punitive policies that criminalize drug use during pregnancy or define prenatal substance use as child maltreatment in child welfare statutes. If newborns are found to have prenatal exposure to substances […]
CHERISH Appoints Margaret Lowenstein as the Dissemination and Policy Core Co-director
The Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH) is proud to welcome Margaret Lowenstein, assistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine and senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) at the University of Pennsylvania, as the new co-director of the Dissemination and […]
Providing Naloxone in the Emergency Department Can Save Lives
Overdose deaths continue to be a national tragedy. More than 800,000 Americans died from an overdose between 1999-2019, and the annual rate of overdoses has increased dramatically during the pandemic, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Roughly 7 in 10 current overdose deaths involve opioids, which means that […]
Why Does the Opioid Mortality Rate Continue to Rise?
From April 2020 through April 2021, there were 100,300 drug overdose deaths across the country according to the CDC — a 28.5% increase over the previous year. Some 75% of these were opioid-related overdoses that killed an average of nine users an hour around the clock throughout the year. Looking forward, the just-published Stanford-Lancet Commission on […]
Meet Ane-Kristine Finbraten: Harkness/Norwegian Institute of Public Health Fellow, Physician, and Researcher on Hepatitis C Elimination
Coming to New York City was an easy decision for Harkness Fellow Ane-Kristine Finbraten. The city has one of the most robust hepatitis C elimination efforts to learn from. A founding member of the Centre for Elimination of Hepatitis C in Norway and an infectious diseases provider, Finbraten was elected as a 2021-2022 Commonwealth Fund […]
Cost of Hepatitis C Care Facilitation for HIV/Hepatitis C Co-infected People Who Use Drugs
The development of direct-acting antivirals transformed hepatitis C virus (HCV) therapy, allowing patients to experience fewer side effects and non-specialist providers to prescribe HCV treatment with more ease. Despite these advances, existing social and structural barriers, such as stigma and accessibility of medical care, restrict access to effective HCV treatment for people who use drugs […]
Advancing Evidence-Based Substance Use Disorder Treatment Policies
If you want to reform state laws to require detox facilities to include medications like buprenorphine and methadone in their treatments, you should start by changing the “hearts and minds” of those who oppose it, Rebekah Gee, MD, MPH, MHSPR, told the January 14, 2022 Penn LDI/CHERISH Virtual Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Keynoting a gathering organized […]
Principles and Metrics for Evaluating Oregon’s Drug Decriminalization Measure
In November 2020, Oregonians voted to pass Measure 110, a ballot initiative that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of all drugs and increases access to low-barrier substance use disorder treatment and harm reduction services. Led by the Drug Policy Alliance, the ballot measure is a historic step forward to address drug-related arrests that disproportionally impact low-income and people of […]
Lowering the Barriers to Medication Treatment for People with Opioid Use Disorder
Overdose deaths have reached unprecedented levels in the U.S., despite effective medications to treat opioid use disorders (OUDs). Because the regulatory and administrative barriers to treatment are high, only about 11% of people with OUD receive effective medications, which include buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone. In response, clinicians and advocates have looked to a “low-threshold” approach […]
Targeting Emergency Department Resources to Address the Opioid Epidemic
In a new study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, my colleagues and I estimate the number and distribution of emergency visits for opioid use disorder (OUD) across the country. We found that nearly 2/3 of all emergency visits for OUD occurred in 25% of EDs nationwide. Why is this important? Patients with OUD come to the […]
Improving Opioid Overdose
In the summer of 2021, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) awarded Bruce R. Schackman, CHERISH director and Saul P. Steinberg Distinguished Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Natasha Martin, CHERISH Research Affiliate and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego, a scientific conference grant to provide simulation modeling […]
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