“…Unintentional overdose death is often a
consequence of untreated or improperly treated opioid use disorder (OUD), reflecting
a long-standing addiction treatment gap in the United States and the difficulties
patients face in accessing evidence-based care (Ghitza & Tai, 2014; Volkow, Friedan,
Hyde, & Cha, 2014). Despite FDA approval of three effective
medications (methadone, buprenorphine, and XR-naltrexone) shown to reduce overdose
among patients with OUD (Degenhardt, Bucello,
Mathers, et al, 2010; Lee, Friedmann,
Kinlock, et al, 2016; Lee, Nunes, Novo,
et al, 2018), there remain low rates of initiation and retention on
these medications (Aletraris, Bond, & Roman,
2015; Timko, Schultz, Cucciare, Vittorio,
& Garrison-Diehn, 2016; Turner,
Kruszewski, & Alexander, 2015). An alarmingly low percentage - barely
a fifth - of the 2.4 million individuals estimated to have OUD (SAMHSA, 2017) receive any specialty care in a given year
(Saloner, 2015; Wu, Zhu, & Swartz, 2016).…”