These resource links provide a more in-depth look at what factors power the opioid epidemic and the search for solutions. The research was among the sources the Attorney General’s SCOPE team used in evaluating what recommendations to make to improve Ohio’s response to the crisis.
Drug use in the U.S.: Every year, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a section of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, sends field agents nationwide to conduct comprehensive household interviews on substance use and disorders, mental health and treatment services.
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/nsduh-national-survey-drug-use-and-health
Unintended consequences of help: This working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at how interventions to decrease the abuse of prescription opioids — such as the introduction of an abuse-deterrent version of OxyContin in 2010 — had the unintended consequence of increasing the use of illegal opioids, such as heroin.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w23031
Medical school recommendations: A task force of medical school leaders and government officials in Massachusetts developed 10 core competencies that every doctor should know about prescribing opioids.
https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/FullText/2016/10000/Developing_Core_Competencies_for_the_Prevention.13.aspx
Patient use patterns: Both of these studies look at patients who have surgery and then are prescribed opioids, including how many of the pills are taken and how they are stored.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147972
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2644905
The inside job: An advocacy group launched by a medical technology company commissioned this study of hospital executives and medical providers to better understand the issue of health care workers who divert opiates away from patients for personal use or sale, including how to solve the problem.
https://go.bd.com/BD-Institute-for-Medication-Management-Excellence-Drug-Diversion.html
Repairing pathologies: In this analysis based in behavioral economics, researchers examine the internal and environmental factors that keep a drug abuser coming back to his or her drug of choice, including how to counter those “reinforcement pathologies.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4501268/
A cost for business: Human resources professionals reported in this survey that their companies are generally unprepared to deal with workers’ opioid addictions.
https://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/survey-hr-pros-not-equipped-to-address-opioids-in-the-workplace
Caught in the tide: Child hospitalizations for opioid poisonings increased nearly twofold from 1997 to 2012 as opioid prescriptions nationwide saw significant increases, according to this study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2571466
Brain diagnosis: This research compiles what is known about how addiction changes brain activity — including compromising the reward system and overactivating stress systems — in an effort to find ways to diagnose drug use disorder in its various intensities.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2006.01586.x?sid=nlm%3Apubmed