What We Do

Population Data

We use data from health insurers, medical records, and government agencies to identify optimal strategies to improve care for people who use substances.

One powerful approach to measuring economic value is using data from the real world. Administrative claims records and data repositories from electronic health records complement data from clinical trials and cohort studies. These datasets reach their maximum potential when they are linked across service agencies, enabling us to follow drug use-related outcomes through multiple settings.

How We Work

Our investigators lead the effort to employ a linked administrative record database in Massachusetts to examine opportunities to improve substance use care. Based in part on our successes in Massachusetts, we are supporting other similar state-level initiatives to link administrative record datasets.

Our investigators and CHERISH Research Affiliates also work with diverse national datasets that contain records from commercial health insurers, Medicaid, Medicare, and pharmacies as well as national data on social determinants of health. Data on substance use patterns and treatments are notably difficult to identify nationally because of diverse sources of care and financing, stigma, and other factors. By comparing outcomes observed in different datasets we improve the quality of economic research in the substance use field.

Databases We Have Used:

Related Content

11/06/24 Research Highlights

Racial and Ethnic Disparities Along the Hepatitis C Care Cascade Among Priority Populations

Over the last two decades, injection opioid use has increased among reproductive-aged women, with resultant increases in mother-to-child hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmissions in the U.S. Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment is highly effective at reducing and eliminating the risk of HCV transmissions. Yet, studies show lower odds of receiving DAA treatment for women compared to […]

09/12/24 Research Highlights

Insurance Instability for Patients with Opioid Use Disorder in the Year After Diagnosis

Access to health insurance is crucial to gaining the necessary diagnostic and therapeutic services to achieve and maintain good health. Insurance is especially necessary to access medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) as the cost of MOUD can be a barrier to staying in treatment. If insurance coverage is disrupted, MOUD treatment may be more […]

08/12/24 Research Highlights

Association between claims-based setting of diagnosis and treatment initiation among Medicare patients with Hepatitis C

Direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) have been available since 2015 for hepatitis C (HCV). Nonetheless, very few patients with HCV initiate DAA treatment, ranging from 5% to 30%. The location where a patient is first diagnosed can also influence the care patients receive afterward, especially when a referral to a specialist or coordinated care is needed. In […]

07/10/24 Research Highlights

Medicaid-Covered Peer Support Services Used by Enrollees With Opioid Use Disorder

Peer support services (PSS) play an increasingly important role in supporting recovery for people with substance use disorder (SUD). Through these services, peer support workers combine lived experience and professional training to provide health education, encouragement and empathy, recovery modeling, and concrete assistance in overcoming barriers to recovery. As of 2018, 37 Medicaid programs covered PSS for SUD. In a research letter in JAMA Network Open, Dr. Yuhua Bao, professor of population health sciences, and colleagues investigated multi-state utilization of Medicaid-covered PSS in 2019. Researchers found that overall use of Medicaid-covered […]

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04/02/24 Research Highlights

New Study Reveals Preventable-Suicide Risk Profiles

Individuals with physical health concerns made up the largest and fastest growing of five subgroups of individuals who died by suicide n the United States over roughly twenty years, according to an analysis led by Weill Cornell Medicine in collaboration with Columbia University, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, the University of Hong Kong and […]

08/04/23 Research Highlights

Initiation of Hepatitis C Treatment Low Among Medicaid Recipients

While there are highly effective treatments for the hepatitis C virus (HCV), only 1 in 5 Medicaid enrollees diagnosed with HCV started treatment, according to a retrospective study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University’s Ithaca campus. The findings revealed that treatment uptake rates were even lower among people under 30, women, […]

10/03/22 Research Highlights

Prevalence of HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis Prescribing Among Persons with Commercial Insurance and Likely Injection Drug Use

The United States has made important strides to reduce the incidence and negative outcomes of HIV, including increasing the availability of effective treatment and prevention in the form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). While the incidence of new HIV infections fell significantly from 130,000 in 1985, progress has stalled at approximately 39,000 new infections per year […]

06/29/22 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 […]

03/25/22 Research Highlights

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 […]

12/20/21 Research Highlights

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 […]