Revisions to 42 CFR Patient Confidentiality Rules for Substance Use Disorder: What It Means for Health Services Researchers
In August 2019 the United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) proposed a revision to the Federal rule that protects patient confidentiality for people with substance use disorders, referred to as 42 CFR Part 2. The sixty day comment period has ended and comments are currently under consideration. This proposal seeks to facilitate disclosure […]
USPSTF and CDC Recommend Expanded HCV Testing for All US Adults
The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released a draft recommendation for hepatitis C (HCV) antibody and RNA screening in all adults ages 18 to 79. This is a departure from their current 2013 recommendation of risk-based screening, including people who inject drugs (PWID), and one-time screening in baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965. The recommendation […]
Achieving Value in Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Paying for What Works (and Not Paying for What Doesn’t): Workshop Summary
More than 100 policymakers, practitioners, and researchers discussed and debated how payment policy can promote evidence-based, cost-effective substance use disorder treatment, in a recent workshop hosted by the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV and HIV (CHERISH) and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of […]
Increased number of children entering the foster care due to parental drug use
In a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics, CHERISH Pilot Grant Recipient Angelica Meinhofer examined national trends in foster care entries attributable to parental drug use between 2000 and 2017. There were approximately 5 million foster care entries between 2000 and 2017, 23.38% percent of which were attributable to parental drug use. Moreover, the number of […]
Progress of “Netflix” subscription model negotiations to pay for HCV Treatment
In 2018, the state of Louisiana spent approximately $35 million to treat 1,000 individuals with chronic Hepatitis C Virus (HCV). Unfortunately, these 1,000 treated individuals comprise only about 1% of the state’s 90,000 individuals living with HCV, including about 39,000 covered by the state’s Medicaid program or prison system. Treating everyone would cost more than […]
CHERISH Investigators and Research Affiliates Support NIDA Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN)
On July 24 2019, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) announced twelve grants totaling approximately $155 million for the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) as part of the greater NIDA HEAL initiative. JCOIN will establish a network of 10 clinical research institutions, a Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center (MAARC), and a Coordination and Translation Center (CTC) that […]
CHERISH Workshop Addresses an ‘Unfortunate Reality’ of the Addiction Treatment Industry
Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and established in 2015, CHERISH is a five year collaboration of researchers from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) of the University of Pennsylvania, Weill Cornell Medical College, Boston Medical Center, and the University of Miami. Their work is focused on studying the health economics […]
Care Integration of Hepatitis C and Opioid Use Disorder Treatment is Cost-Effective and Improves Health Outcomes
People who inject drugs (PWID) often become infected with HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV). While hepatitis C can be successfully treated with medication, care is often fragmented and rarely integrated within one program or setting. Two recent studies by CHERISH researchers modeled economic and health outcomes for PWID and found evidence of synergistic benefits […]
No Safe Dose for That First Opioid Prescription
LDI Senior Fellows Zack Meisel, Benjamin Sun, and colleagues have a striking and sobering chart in a recent Annals of Emergency Medicine article on initial opioid prescriptions in the emergency department. They tracked how many “opioid-naïve” patients (i.e., those without a record of opioid use in the previous year) had persistent or high-risk opioid prescription use in the subsequent […]
Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder Lowers Overdose Risk in Commercially Insured Individuals
“Medications for opioid use disorder saves lives.” That’s the title and conclusion of a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, based on a review of the scientific evidence. In a new study in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, CHERISH investigators Jake Morgan, Bruce Schackman and Benjamin Linas add to this evidence base by […]
Angélica Meinhofer, Margaret Lowenstein and Rachel Epstein Awarded Fifth Cycle of CHERISH Pilot Grant Funding
Angélica Meinhofer, PhD Dr. Angélica Meinhofer is an Instructor in the Department of Healthcare Policy & Research at Weill Cornell Medical College. She completed her doctorate in Economics at Brown University and previously worked as a Research Economist at RTI International’s Behavioral Health Services, Policy and Economics Research Program where she designed and conducted evaluations […]
Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and the Opioid Crisis: Paying Attention to Social Context
As you likely continue to read in your local news or experience in your community, the United States is in the midst of a deadly drug overdose and addiction crisis. In fact, overdoses claimed the lives of 70,000 individuals in 2017—more than two-thirds of those overdoses were linked to opioids. While drug overdoses disproportionately affect young adults, there […]
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