HeRoP Lab’s director Dr. Marynia Kolak was a co-author on two studies recently published in JAMA Open. Both examined different dimensions of access to medications for opioid use disorder, for different populations.
Adolescent Access
In a study with researchers at Indiana University, the team explored Clinician Willingness to Prescribe Medications for Opioid Use Disorder to Adolescents in Indiana. In this cross-sectional study of 832 waivered clinicians in Indiana, 91.2% reported unwillingness to prescribe MOUD to adolescents. Clinicians trained in family medicine and those serving in less populated communities were significantly more likely than others to prescribe to adolescents.
Dr. Kolak supported development of an innovative research design that expanded a logistic regression model commonly used in health research with spatially-explicit variables. Specifically, the model took into account the context of nearby zip codes using spatially lagged variables. The spatially explicit model explained more than the naive model alone.
Jails & Access to MOUDs
Kolak also served as a co-author on a study published at JAMA Open entitled “Factors Associated With the Availability of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder in US Jails.” In this survey study of 1028 jails, less than half of jails (43.8%) offered medications for opioid use disorder to at least some individuals and 12.8% offered these medications to anyone with an opioid use disorder who requested them.
National Institutes of Health has since published a press release and many news outlets have begun to cover the story, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, USA Today, The Hill and others.
“It is hard to believe but true that in 2024, with all the evidence that [medications for opioid use disorder] MOUD are associated with reduced death in persons with [opioid use disorder] OUD and the incredibly high level of diagnosed individuals in our jail and community settings, we continue to see a lack of provision of these lifesaving medications to people who need and want them.
The time is now to stop underusing these effective treatments in our jails and other carceral and community settings. The medications work, but we as a society need to help remove barriers for people to access these evidenced-based medications wherever they are to end the opioid overdose epidemic now.”
– Sandra Springer (commentary on published paper)
The *spatial perspective* brought into this research involved linking community contextual data from the Opioid Environment Policy Scan Warehouse managed by our Geospatial team (OEPS). Note: a major update to OEPS is coming in two weeks including a new R data package!
Healthy Regions & Policies Lab 