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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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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