This is an issue brief from the Brandeis Opioid Resource Connector that examines the role of social determinants of health (SDoH) in the opioid crisis and how addressing them might improve health outcomes. It focuses on three central domains of SDoH, employment, housing, and education, and …

This is an academic paper that shows that there is a strong relationship between medical school rank and opioid prescribing. Physicians who completed their initial training at top medical schools wrote significantly fewer opioid prescriptions annually than physicians from lower ranked schools,…

This is a report from the National Governors Association which describes syringe service and harm reduction programs implemented in Kentucky in order to curb infectious disease transmission and establish new pathways to substance use disorder treatment and recovery. Key insights from this…

This is an issue brief from SAMHSA specifically designed for the drug court team: the judge, coordinator, public defender or defense attorney, prosecutor, evaluator, treatment provider, law enforcement officer, and probation officer.

Its objective is to encourage drug court personnel to…

This is a report from the American Society of Addiction Medicine that is divided into three sections: (1) state Medicaid coverage for opioid use disorder (2) commerical health plan coverage of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) (3) a summary of the evidence on the effectiveness and cost-…

This is an academic paper that describes the implementation of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) in four prisons and jails employing the EPIS (Exploration, Planning, Implementation, and Sustainment) framework.

As the criminal justice system has been historically resistant to…

This is a report from SAMHSA that provides individuals who provide or coordinate reentry services for women involved in the criminal justice system with resources for serving women who are reentering the community after a period of incarceration. The guide is presented in a checklist format and…

This is a report by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) that offers strategies on how health plans can best address the opioid crisis, broken down into each component of the continuum of care: prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery. It also highlights the successes of several…

This is a report from the National League of Cities entitled “Aligning City, County and State Resources to Address the Opioid Epidemic: Lessons Learned and Future Opportunities” which is targeted to municipal governments and other government entities.

This document shares the key…

This is an academic paper by experts in the field that discusses the need for a comprehensive approach to address the opioid crisis. A multidisciplinarian approach should include the contributions of neuroscience, pharmacology, epidemiology, treatment services, and prevention, which are…

This is an academic paper that evaluates emerging technologies to test for the presence of fentanyl, including fentanyl test strips, a hand-held Raman Spectrometer, and a desktop Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectrometer. Fentanyl test strips were found to be the most sensitive and specific and…

This is a report, put together by NORC for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), that examines the long-term sustainability and impact of community coalitions that were funded by the Community Access Program (CAP) and its successor, the Healthy Communities…

This is a report that summarizes an environmental scan of community-based interventions to prevent opioid overdoses among tribal communities, a population that has been disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis. The document has many helpful links to resources and highlights several…

This is a perspective academic article on the intersection of the opioid crisis and the coronavirus pandemic written by expert researchers, with a focus on treatment access for medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). 

This is an academic paper that describes how an opioid stewardship program at a healthcare system can address the opioid crisis. Institutional changes include reviewing current practice, workflows, and external and internal guidelines and evaluating and standardizing prescribing practices.

This is a report from the Drug Policy Alliance that gives an overview of the emergence of drug-induced homicide laws across states to address the opioid crisis and how this may be an ineffective policy response due to the nuances of buyers and sellers in an illicit drug market. Several real-…

This is a report that provides an update on the Trump Administration's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which includes progress made on the initial 56 recommendations made by the Commission. 

This is a report from the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law Center (authors LaBelle and Weizman) that provides recommendations for actions that state and local leaders can take immediately to increase evidence-based practices, decrease arbitrary…

This is an academic paper that examined initiation of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) based on waiting time for an appointment at a low threshold addiction clinic in Boston. Patients who were able to get same-day or next-day appointments were more likely to arrive at their…

This website provides a report and other resources from the Association of Schools and Programs in Public Health (ASSPH) that makes research-informed recommendations across the entire continuum of care to address the opioid crisis.