Yuhua Bao

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 […]

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 […]

A recent study in Health Affairs by CHERISH Research Affiliate Dr. Yuhua Bao and CHERISH investigators Dr. Zachary Meisel and Dr. Bruce Schackman examined the impact of prescription drug monitoring program policies on high-risk opioid prescriptions. Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) are statewide databases of controlled substances dispensed at retail pharmacies. Currently, all states and Washington D.C. except Missouri […]

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is one of the leading causes of infectious disease deaths in the United States. Injection drug use is a common route of HCV transmission and the annual number of reported cases continues to rise due to the opioid epidemic. Previous HCV treatment regimens had severe side effects and limited efficacy, but […]

In the opening plenary panel of the CHERISH (Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV and HIV) conference on evidence-based policy and practice are (l to r) Daniel Polsky, PhD, moderator and Executive Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI); Tom McLellan, PhD, Chairman of the Board and […]

To address the crisis of opioid misuse, abuse, and overdose, every state but Missouri has implemented a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) that collects data from retail pharmacies on all dispensed controlled substances. PDMPs can help prescribers identify patients who might misuse or divert controlled substances, as well as patients who need substance abuse treatment. […]

Medicare rang in the new year with four new codes to reimburse primary care teams for behavioral health services. According to an article that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine on February 2, 2017, three of the codes support services using the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) and the fourth allows for services provided under other […]

The Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorders, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH) was profiled at the Liver Meeting® 2016 in Boston, MA. The Center’s mission is to develop and disseminate health economic research on healthcare utilization, health outcomes, and health-related behaviors that informs substance use disorder treatment policy and HCV and […]

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf on Thursday announced the launch of a new Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) designed to log and analyze every prescription for opioids and other controlled substances dispensed anywhere in the state. The new web-based computer program is Pennsylvania’s latest tool in the battle to lower the body count of prescription drug […]

Pilot grant awardee Dr. Yuhua Bao was invited to present her recent publication, “Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Are Associated with Sustained Reductions in Opioid Prescribing by Physicians,” at the Health Affairs Issue Briefing on Behavioral Health in Washington, D.C on June 7, 2016. Dr. Bao’s presentation centered on her publication in the June 2017 issue of Health Affairs and is […]

Karen Lasser, MD, MPH Dr. Lasser’s pilot grant proposes to evaluate economic and health outcomes for a primary care-based HCV treatment program in a patient-centered medical home. The treatment model is based on the chronic care model including a multidisciplinary team with physician, nursing, social worker, pharmacy technician and pharmacist. The team works together to […]