Funded Projects

The goal of the Tailored Retention and Engagement for Equitable Treatment of Opioid use disorder (OUD) and Pain (TREETOP) research program is to develop effective, equitable, and sustainable interventions for chronic pain and opioid misuse/disorder that improve engagement in medication for opioid misuse/disorder treatment and retention in office-based addiction treatment. TREETOP will prioritize disproportionately affected rural and Black communities. The Engagement research project will investigate whether pain self-management can improve pain and engage primary care patients to seek medication treatment for opioid misuse/disorder. The Retention project will investigate whether pain self-management and/or flexibly dosed buprenorphine/naloxone can improve pain and retention in treatment among patients who have already begun care in office-based addiction treatment programs. With engagement from stakeholders and representatives with varied perspectives and lived experiences, this research will advance the science of sustainably and equitably managing chronic pain and opioid misuse/disorder, prioritizing disproportionately affected communities.

This study aims to determine how exposure to opioids and other substances affects the developing fetal brain and shapes later child cognitive outcomes. Researchers will collect neuroimaging and behavioral data, as well as measures of environmental exposures related to social equity, COVID-19, and socioeconomic factors. The project will reduce traditional barriers to participation by using innovative data collection methods and mobile labs to bring the research to underrepresented and marginalized communities. This approach aims to clarify the impact of substance exposure on child development through an equitable approach to research, with generalizable findings. The study will take place at Rhode Island Hospital, where participants will be drawn from a largely rural population.

Including all population subgroups in clinical research is important to ensure that research results apply to the entire population and can be implemented effectively. However, many communities are underrepresented in health research due to individual, cultural, or structural reasons. This project aims to develop a Health Beliefs Toolkit that will be a readily accessible resource for researchers, providers, and community groups to help them engage diverse and minority populations in clinical research, particularly regarding substance use disorders. The project will examine, adapt, and test existing materials and resources targeting individual and structural barriers to research engagement. The toolkit will also assess individuals’ knowledge of health as well as health-related personal values and beliefs to enhance health and research “literacy.” The toolkit will be targeted to primary care providers, community health workers, peer counselors, agency representatives, and patient and non-patient groups to enhance practice-based research in underserved communities.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium (HBCD-NC) will establish a normative model of developmental trajectories over the first 10 years of life. All sites in the HBCD-NC will carry out a common research protocol and will assemble and distribute a comprehensive research dataset to the scientific community. The HBCD-NC will collect neural, behavioral, physiological, and psychological measures, as well as biospecimens, to characterize neurodevelopmental trajectories. Most participants will be recruited in the second trimester of pregnancy, with a smaller subset recruited at birth, and followed for the first 10 years of life. The Pennsylvania State University study site is in a region hard hit by opioid and methamphetamine use disorders and will recruit mother-infant pairs from largely rural communities.

This research will expand the understanding of the effects of non-invasive vagal nerve stimulation on patients with opioid use disorder by examining the relationship between nerve stimulation and treatment, respiratory physiology, withdrawal symptoms, and relapse. Additionally, these relationships will be added to existing algorithms and equipment being developed by the Inan Research Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Collecting and determining the quality of conventional respiration signals, as well as collecting high-resolution impedance based respiratory measurements, will help to determine the impact of non-invasive vagal nerve stimulation on breathing and lung function in people with opioid use disorder, toward development of a profile of physiological effects of non-invasive vagal nerve stimulation during opioid withdrawal.

Emergency department (ED)-initiated buprenorphine/naloxone (BUP) with referral for ongoing BUP is superior to referral alone in engaging patients with untreated opioid use disorder (OUD) in treatment at 30 days and is cost-effective. However, logistical barriers exist in translating research into practice. New BUP formulations such as the extended-release injectable BUP (CAM2038, XR-BUP) hold promise in addressing many of the barriers more effectively than sublingual buprenorphine (SL-BUP) by treating the patients’ symptoms for up to seven days. This study will recruit, train and provide resources to 30 ED sites throughout the U.S. using implementation facilitation strategies to address stigma and provide ED-initiated BUP for patients presenting with OUD who are not receiving medications for OUD. Once implementation is adequately achieved, the sites will conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to compare the effectiveness of SL-BUP versus XR-BUP on ED patients’ engagement in formal addiction treatment seven days after their ED visit. In addition, in an ancillary component of the study, the use of XR-BUP will be assessed in ED patients with Clinical Opioid Withdrawal Scale (COWS) scores of 4-7.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium (HBCD-NC) will establish a normative model of developmental trajectories over the first 10 years of life. All sites in the HBCD-NC will carry out a common research protocol and will assemble and distribute a comprehensive research dataset to the scientific community. The HBCD-NC will collect neural, behavioral, physiological, and psychological measures, as well as biospecimens, to characterize neurodevelopmental trajectories. Most participants will be recruited in the second trimester of pregnancy, with a smaller subset recruited at birth, and followed for the first 10 years of life. This study will take place at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and recruit diverse people from an urban area, including American Indian populations.

Central Appalachia has been devastated by opioid use disorder and overdose deaths for decades. Treatment access is improving across that region, yet few individuals successfully remain on treatment with medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Peer recovery support services can be highly effective in improving treatment outcomes and recovery, but there is limited evidence of how they can be implemented and used most effectively, particularly for individuals receiving MOUD. This project will create the Studies To Advance Recovery Supports (STARS) Network that aims to expand the infrastructure necessary to implement and evaluate peer recovery support services for these individuals. It will build research capacities at universities and health partners, enroll MOUD clinics and peer recovery support professionals, and promote data harmonization across network partners.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium (HBCD-NC) will establish a normative model of developmental trajectories over the first 10 years of life. All sites in the HBCD-NC will carry out a common research protocol and will assemble and distribute a comprehensive research dataset to the scientific community. The HBCD-NC will collect neural, behavioral, physiological, and psychological measures, as well as biospecimens, to characterize neurodevelopmental trajectories. Most participants will be recruited in the second trimester of pregnancy, with a smaller subset recruited at birth, and followed for the first 10 years of life. The University of Maryland College Park study site is midway between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Maryland, and will recruit a diverse sample of mother-infant pairs from across the region.

Understanding municipal policies that influence implementation of effective evidence-based practices (EBPs) as well as effective strategies for working with municipal groups may inform local efforts to translate EBPs. Just as important, engaging with local stakeholders may help to facilitate the long-term sustainability of EBPs. This can only occur if diverse local actors in municipal governance are thinking about health and behavioral health in the context of municipal planning and policy. Building from research related opioid use disorder and the risk environment, built environment, and zoning, this research will work to support coalition-based approach currently implemented by the HEALing Communities Study. The research aims to develop an understanding of local policies that may affect implementation of community action plans in the HEALing Communities Study Massachusetts communities.

Fentanyl and its analogs are synthetic opioids that are 100 to 10,000 times more potent than morphine. Overdose from these opioids is extremely dangerous due to their ultra-potency and longer half-life than naloxone, the front-line treatment for fentanyl overdose. This research study will develop novel mu opioid receptor antagonists that bind to the same receptor as the opioid drugs and specifically counteract fentanyl and its analogs, thereby reversing the drugs’ acute toxicity more effectively and with fewer side effects than current treatments. The researchers will characterize novel fentanyl derivatives, identify promising compounds, and pursue preclinical development of these compounds as novel reversal agents against the acute toxicity of fentanyl. The goal is to file an Investigational New Drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Although approximately 80% of people with opioid use disorder smoke cigarettes, tobacco use is rarely addressed in treatment of opioid use disorder. Moreover, smoking cessation interventions that are effective in the general population have been minimally effective among people with opioid use disorder. This project will integrate into methadone treatment programs the Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement intervention and motivational interviewing to address use of tobacco and other drugs. This research will determine the value of this intervention compared to attending a support group or receiving motivational interviewing. The project will also examine use of tobacco, opioids, and other drugs, and whether people begin treatment. The research will also study implementation barriers and facilitators to the mindfulness-based approach as well as strategies to enhance its adoption into clinical practice.

Withdrawal symptoms associated with current opioid use disorder treatments, such as naltrexone or buprenorphine, can be serious obstacles to successful treatment. This project aims to develop a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved sedative medication (dexmedetomidine) as an under-the-tongue film to treat opioid withdrawal symptoms at doses that have minimal ill effects on blood pressure and heart rate. This research will compare the safety and efficacy of dexmedetomidine to lofexidine, which is currently approved to treat opioid withdrawal.