The funded study examines policies that regulate the PO supply, including those related to prescription drug monitoring programs, pain management clinic laws, and prescribing limits. In this supplement, we add a set of complementary opioid policies that affect access to treatment for opioid use disorder (e.g., Medicaid coverage of medication for opioid use disorder).

Two challenges emerge when studying the impact of PO policies: (1) the same policy will be enacted with widely varying types of provisions across states; and (2) states often implement multiple policies at the same time, making it difficult to isolate the impact of any one policy. This supplement will address these issues in two critical ways: (1) using expert consensus to identify the policy provisions that should be measured for each opioid policy of interest, and machine learning to identify those provisions that are the strongest predictors of prescribing, opioid initiation, misuse and disorder; and (2) developing a taxonomy to classify states according to the overall restrictiveness of policies aimed at regulating the opioid supply, and expansiveness of policies regulating access to treatment for opioid use disorder. Building on the parent grant, the Administrative Supplement aims to: Supplement Aim 1: Develop a validated taxonomy of opioid policies that will allow researchers to measure variation in key aspects of each policy as well as the overall, cross-policy, restriction of the PO supply and expansion of access to treatment for opioid use disorder. Supplement Aim 2: Identify the opioid policy provisions that are the strongest predictors of changes in opioid prescribing and opioid misuse (with/without BZDs). The proposed study will provide one of the most extensive insights into the opioid policy environment, as enacted and in practice, in the United States to date. Our multidisciplinary team is well-suited to carry out this study, with extensive expertise in opioid epidemiology, opioid law and policy, survey research, and machine learning. The final product, a dataset with state-level data on the expert-identified key policy provisions of interest, and on the overall restrictiveness of the PO supply and expansion of access to treatment for opioid use disorder in the state, will be publicly available in a website, so that other research teams and policymakers may use the classification in their own work.

One selected candidate will receive a stipend via the DSI Scholars program. Amount is subject to available funding.

Faculty Advisor

  • Professor: Silvia Martins
  • Department/School: Epidemiology
  • Location: 722 W 168th St Room 509 New York NY 10023
  • Dr. Martins’s lab conducts research on opioid and marijuana policies and marijuana and opioid-related harm outcomes using data from large national datasets

Project Timeline

  • Earliest starting date: 4/1/2020
  • End date: 8/30/2020
  • Number of hours per week of research expected during Spring 2020: ~10
  • Number of hours per week of research expected during Summer 2020: ~30

Candidate requirements

  • Skill sets: Training in epidemiological methods and biostatistics
  • Student eligibility: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, master’s
  • International students on F1 or J1 visa: eligible