SUD Treatment for Young People: Limited Availability and Costly

"Using the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s treatment locator and search engine advertising data, we identified 160 residential addiction treatment facilities that treated adolescents with opioid use disorder as of December 2022. We called facilities while role-playing as the aunt or uncle of a sixteen-year-old child with a recent nonfatal overdose, to inquire about policies and costs. Eighty-seven facilities (54.4 percent) had a bed immediately available. Among sites with a waitlist, the mean wait time for a bed was 28.4 days.

The Gig Economy, Nightwork, and Stimulant Use

"Nightwork—meaning all jobs that are executed during nighttime—increased as cities became connected to electricity in the early twentieth century, and as economies became more connected globally through the internet. In the current 'gig economy' — dominated by those jobs in which people are paid by the task, rather than receiving a fixed salary — work never stops. Part of this 'performance' has to do with adapting to the different temporal demands of the labor market—in other words, the management of sleep and wakefulness.

Estimated Number of People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) in the US

"We estimated nearly 3.7 million people, or 1.5% of the US adult population, injected drugs in 2018. This estimate is more than 5 times the most recent US estimate of ∼774,000 from 2011 [25]. Much of this increase is likely attributable to increases in IDU, but it is important to consider methodological differences in the creation of this 2018 estimate vs the 2011 estimate.

Cost Benefit Analysis of Opioid Treatment, Syringe Service Programs, and Test & Treat

"Although model projections can only provide estimates of health benefits and costs, such analyses can provide intuition around critical mechanisms and assumptions to inform decision making. Our main finding is that, over 20 y, high coverage (enrollment of 50% of the eligible population) of OAT [Opioid Agonist Therapy], NSPs [Needle and Syringe Programs], and Test & Treat in combination could avert nearly 43,400 (95% CI: 23,000, 74,000) HIV infections among PWID [People Who Inject Drugs] and reduce HIV prevalence among PWID by 27% (95% CI: 12%, 45%).

Closure of Syringe Service Programs Increases Risk of Rebound HIV Outbreaks

"This analysis presents the first study, to our knowledge, to quantitively examine the impact of SSP closure on HIV incidence using a modeling approach. In a rural American setting that had previously experienced an HIV outbreak among PWID, our modeling results suggest that closing an existing SSP would likely lead to a rebound HIV outbreak, with a 1.6-fold increase in incident infections among PWID in 5 years relative to SSP sustainment.

Syringe Service Program Use and Substance Use Treatment

"In this study, there was no indication that needle-exchange use was associated with increasing drug use. Indeed, IDUs who were former users of the exchange were more likely than never-users to report substantial reductions in drug use or stopping injection altogether. Our analysis also suggested that among heroin injectors, needle-exchange participation was wholly compatible with the goals of drug treatment.

Subscribe to