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March 2, 2023 Profile Feature

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 […]

February 9, 2023 Policy Watch

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 […]

June 29, 2022 Research Highlights

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 […]

June 28, 2021 Research Highlights

Hepatitis C Treatment by Non-specialist Providers in the Direct-acting Antiviral Era

After direct-acting antiviral agents to treat hepatitis C were introduced, most of those who prescribed treatment was gastroenterology specialists but there was an increasing proportion of non-specialists. Treatment completion rates were similar between specialists and non-specialists. Direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs), highly effective treatments for hepatitis C virus infection (HCV), transformed HCV therapy and made it […]

June 16, 2021 Research Highlights

Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Mandates Affect Use of Opioids to Treat Acute, Severe Pain

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) have been crucial tools to address unsafe opioid prescribing. High rates of prescribing stoked the flames of the opioid crisis in the early 2000s, but opioid prescriptions have steadily decreased over the past decade. Unfortunately, opioid-related deaths have continued to rise each year. Many states have enacted comprehensive mandates that all clinicians consult the PDMP […]

May 12, 2020 Research Highlights

COVID-19 Can Change The Way We Respond To The Opioid Crisis – For The Better

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges in healthcare delivery to people who use drugs. However, it may also have provided impetus to precipitate innovative changes in providing opioid overdose prevention, syringe services, and medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) to this vulnerable population. In a new Viewpoint in Psychiatric Services, CHERISH Research Affiliate Yuhua Bao from […]

July 10, 2019 Research Highlights

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 […]

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