Below are the most recent reports and articles from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. Please visit our RAND Topics pages for a complete research archive on these and other drug policy-related research topics.
RAND Topic Pages: Substance Abuse TreatmentIn the six jurisdictions with the highest rate of opioid-related mortality in 2016, the most prominent barrier to accessing buprenorphine treatment was the difficulty of finding clinicians.
The growing use of medication treatment for opioid use disorder in the West Virginia Medicaid expansion population provides an opportunity to reduce overdose deaths.
Although many states have passed some type of law affecting naloxone availability, only laws allowing direct dispensing by pharmacists appear to be useful. Communities in which access to naloxone is improved should prepare for increases in nonfatal overdoses and link these individuals to effective treatment.
The relationship between business cycles and health is theoretically complex. In a seminal paper, Ruhm (2000) outlined a series of economic mechanisms through which business cycles may influence health.
This study examines the associations between college attendance and subsequent alcohol and marijuana use behaviors at multiple ages during young adulthood and adulthood, while rigorously controlling for baseline differences by college type.
RAND researchers analyzed the formulas for distributing funds to states under three block grants for services related to mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness (unchanged since 1992) to determine whether they should be modified.
Men and women might respond differently to some treatments for alcohol use disorder. If so, this would be important to consider when selecting treatment. The purpose of this systematic review was to synthesize evidence for gender differences in effects of treatments. While researchers did not identify systematic differences across studies, a paucity of reporting on treatment effects according to gender hindered analysis.
This study highlights factors that affect Community Health Centers' ability to reduce infectious disease transmission related to the opioid epidemic. The emphasis is on rural areas, which have suffered disproportionately from the opioid epidemic and lack resources to address the complex social and medical issues related to opioid use, opioid use disorder, and risk for infectious diseases.
To realize the gains envisioned by recent legislation, the Administration and Congress should prioritize additional funding to modernize our child welfare system to meet the unique needs of families affected by substance misuse.
An expert panel of law enforcement leaders identified promising efforts to combat the opioid crisis, including connecting people with opioid use disorder to medication-assisted treatment; building lasting partnerships to achieve community buy-in, enable information sharing, and effectively tackle challenges; and addressing community and other stakeholder concerns before high-priority harm-reduction approaches can be pursued.
Most of the publicly-funded SUD-treatment programs in this study reported delivering prevention and early-intervention services for children of their adult clients.
The current study aims to elucidate the effectiveness of the services DUI programs provide compared to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to prevent impaired driving.
The objectives of this study were to describe quality of care for unhealthy alcohol use among patients visiting primary care settings and to determine whether better quality of alcohol care was linked to reduced alcohol consumption 6 months later.
Morphine equivalent daily dose thresholds are a promising policy tool, but there is a lack of consensus about how to use the thresholds and what the threshold level should be.
Substance use prevention efforts that seek to counter peer pressures should begin prior to middle school and span high school, and address the role of peer and family environments.
The formulas for distributing funds to states under three block grants (the Community Mental Health Services Block Grant, the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, and the Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness program) have not been updated since 1992. RAND researchers conducted this congressionally mandated study to determine whether the formulas should be modified.
LGB opioid disparities varied significantly by sexual identity &gender. All LGB subgroups had elevated lifetime pain reliever misuse. Bisexual women uniquely had elevated OUD rates and lifetime injection heroin use.
Rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), which occurs in newborns who were exposed to opioids in the womb, have increased dramatically over the past decade. This web-based tool displays the rates of NAS from 2009 to 2015 by county in eight states: Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.
The overdose crisis in North America continues to worsen, prompting many jurisdictions to consider opening supervised consumption sites (SCS) that allow individuals to consume street-sourced drugs under medical supervision.
This brief describes the results of a study about the surge in synthetic opioids in the United States. The authors found that limiting policy responses to existing approaches will likely be insufficient and may condemn many people to early deaths.
