{"id":19983,"date":"2025-10-11T17:24:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T16:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=19983"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:45:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:45:15","slug":"only-1-in-4-addicted-to-opioids-takes-life-saving-meds-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2025\/10\/only-1-in-4-addicted-to-opioids-takes-life-saving-meds-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Only 1 in 4 addicted to opioids takes life-saving meds. Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Liz Mineo – Harvard Staff Writer -September 16, 2025<\/span><\/p>\n

Study examining potential solution to treatment gap \u2014 especially in rural areas \u2014 gets federal funding cut<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Between 1999 and 2023, approximately\u00a0806,000 Americans<\/strong>\u00a0died from opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet of the estimated 2.4 million U.S. adults with opioid use disorder, only\u00a0one in four<\/strong>\u00a0receives medications that can reduce overdose risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Telehealth has shown promise as a potential tool to prevent opioid overdose deaths, but funding for a study launched last year by health economist\u00a0Haiden Huskamp<\/strong>\u00a0examining its use and impact was terminated as part of the mass cancellation of federal research grants by the Trump administration in May.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our research, including that for this grant, is looking at why so few people are getting evidence-based treatments for substance use disorder,\u201d said Huskamp, Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. \u201cMedications for opioid use disorder are highly efficacious. They reduce opioid use; they reduce overdose risk and other negative outcomes. These medications save lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A shortage of clinicians specialized in treating opioid use disorders \u2014 particularly in rural areas \u2014 presents a major barrier to receiving care, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur work has been trying to understand, since the pandemic in particular, who was using telemedicine for opioid use disorder,\u201d said Huskamp, \u201cand whether the availability of care, via telemedicine, has meant that clinicians who treat substance use disorders are now seeing more patients in areas where there aren\u2019t enough doctors who do this work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

217<\/strong>Americans, on average, died each day from an opioid overdose in 2023, according to the CDC<\/span><\/p>\n

For the past five years Huskamp, Ph.D. \u201997, has been studying telemedicine as a strategy to expand access to opioid use disorder treatment and life-saving medications such as methadone, buprenorphine, and the quick overdose-reversal drug naloxone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the opioid epidemic that we are still in the middle of, telemedicine might be an answer because it could address a number of barriers to treatment access,\u201d said Huskamp.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although in May the CDC reported that opioid overdose deaths\u00a0dropped<\/strong>\u00a0from 83,140 in 2023 to 54,743 in 2024, the death toll remains high. According to the CDC, in 2023, on average, 217 people died each day from an opioid overdose.<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal of Huskamp\u2019s terminated four-year study, launched last year with a team of 15 researchers, was to provide evidence-based information on the efficacy of telemedicine that can guide policymakers as they address the opioid epidemic. It was a renewal of a previous grant, which yielded 24 different publications whose findings have informed\u00a0new rules<\/strong>\u00a0by the Drug Enforcement Agency to expand telemedicine access for treating opioid dependence. Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the latest research sought to examine quality of care and clinical outcomes by analyzing data from Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurance, and national pharmacy claims.<\/span><\/p>\n

Telemedicine for opioid use disorder became more widespread across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, and researchers have been eager to probe the data to find out if it improved access to care for patients in remote areas, and how the quality of care compared to traditional in-person care.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnything we can do to try to improve the healthcare system to more effectively allow people to access care and to do so in a more efficient way is really important,\u201d said Huskamp. \u201cWe need research like this to guide policymaking, so that we can improve the system as much as possible for people to get the treatment that they need.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0 https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2025\/09\/only-1-in-4-addicted-to-opioids-takes-life-saving-meds-why\/<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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by Liz Mineo – Harvard Staff Writer -September 16, 2025 Study examining potential solution to treatment gap \u2014 especially in rural areas \u2014 gets federal funding cut Between 1999 and 2023, approximately\u00a0806,000 Americans\u00a0died from opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet of the estimated 2.4 million U.S. adults with opioid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,68,34,131,135,40,36,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-heroin-methadone","category-medicines","category-opioids","category-prevention-research","category-treatment-addiction","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19984,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19983\/revisions\/19984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}