Compelling News & Research from the Field
New Leadership for ONDCP: In July, the Biden Administration announced its intent to nominate Dr. Rahul Gupta to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Dr. Gupta led the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health before moving to the March of Dimes. Read more.
Reducing Stigma: In hopes of curbing rising opioid-related overdoses, Rhode Island approved drug injection sites, becoming the first state to do so.
Gamifying Opioid Treatment: “PlaySmart,” a new game funded by NIH, intends to help address youth opioid misuse.
Training for Community Management of Overdose: The UNODC-WHO Stop-Overdose-Safely (S-O-S) project released a report showing that training bystanders, first responders, and other community members who were likely to witness an opioid overdose in overdose reversal techniques can reduce the number of opioid-related deaths. The program was conducted in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Ukraine.
Building Better Data Sets: STATNews unpacked why mining opioid prescribing, substance use disorder diagnoses, and overdose data for predictive modeling is a challenge.
But Regression Might Help: An article published in The Lancet Public Health describes a statistical analysis that can predict county-level overdose death rates and help communities assess their specific risk levels.
Goals for MAT and Odds of Achieving Them: A new study published in JAMA Network Open suggests that self-reported treatment goals of youth receiving medication-assisted therapies for opioid use disorder are variable and are not associated with increased odds for achieving them.