(Press-News.org) BOSTON – New research from Boston Medical Center concluded that offering medications to treat opioid addiction in jails and prisons leads to a decrease in overdose deaths. Published in JAMA Network Open, the study also found that treating opioid addiction during incarceration is cost-effective in terms of healthcare costs, incarceration costs, and deaths avoided.
Overdoses kill more than 100,000 people per year in America and this number continues to increase every year. People with addiction are more likely to be incarcerated than treated, with those from communities of color who use drugs more likely to be incarcerated than White people. Most prisons and jails in the United States discontinue medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) upon incarceration, even if taken stably prior to incarceration, and do not initiate MOUD prior to release. Patients often suffer withdrawal symptoms while incarcerated and the post incarceration period is a time of very high-risk for overdose death.
“Offering medications for opioid addiction for incarcerated individuals saves lives. Specifically, offering all three medications—buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone—is the most effective at saving lives and is more cost-effective,” said lead author Avik Chatterjee, MD, primary care and addiction medicine physician at Boston Medical Center and Boston Healthcare for the Homeless and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. “We hope our study supports policy change at the state and federal level, requiring treating opioid use disorder with medications among people who are incarcerated.”
The study modeled the impact of MOUD access during and upon release from incarceration on population-level overdose mortality and OUD-related treatment costs in Massachusetts using three different strategies: 1) no MOUD provided during incarceration or upon release, 2) offer only extended-release naltrexone (XR-NTX) upon release from incarceration, and 3) offer all three MOUD at intake.
Among 30,000 incarcerated people with OUD, offering no MOUD was associated with 40,927 MOUD treatment starts over a 5-year period and 1,259 overdose deaths after 5 years. Over 5 years, offering XR-NTX at release led to 10,466 additional treatment starts and 40 fewer overdose deaths. In comparison, offering all three MOUD at intake led to 11,923 additional treatment starts, compared to offering no MOUD, and 83 fewer overdose deaths. Among everyone with OUD in MA, “XR-NTX only” averted 95 overdose deaths over 5 years—a 0.9% decrease in state-level overdose mortality, while the all-MOUD strategy averted 192 overdose deaths—a 1.8% decrease.
In this simulation modeling study, researchers found that offering any MOUD to incarcerated individuals with OUD would prevent overdose deaths and offering all three MOUD would prevent more deaths and save money.
Researchers believe that a treatment-based approach is more appropriate than an incarceration-based one for treating addiction. Proactively offering treatment during incarceration can save lives and is a cost-effective health intervention, while also supporting the dignity of people who are incarcerated.
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About Boston Medical Center
Boston Medical Center is a leading academic medical center with a deep commitment to health equity and a proud history of serving all who come to us for care. BMC provides high-quality healthcare and wrap around support that treats the whole person, extending beyond our physical campus into our vibrant and diverse communities. BMC is advancing medicine, while training the next generation of healthcare providers and researchers as the primary teaching affiliate of Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. BMC is a founding member of Boston Medical Center Health System, which supports patients and health plan members through a value based, coordinated continuum of care.
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The objective of the Activity Group on Financial Mathematics and Engineering is to advance fundamental research and implementation of practices in financial engineering, computation, and operations. The group aims at fostering collaborations among applied mathematicians, applied probabilists, statisticians, computer and data scientists, economists, as well as industry practitioners. The conference will expose state-of-art mathematical and computational tools in quantitative finance, including its uses in the public and private sector. The activity group promotes and supports the development of financial mathematics and engineering as an academic discipline. END ...
Certain ambrosia beetles species engage in active agriculture. As social communities, they breed and care for food fungi in the wood of trees and ensure that so-called weed fungi spread less. Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Peter Biedermann, professor of Forest Entomology and Forest Protection at the University of Freiburg, now demonstrate for the first time that ambrosia beetles can distinguish between different species of fungi by their scents. "The results can contribute to a better understanding of why beetles selectively colonise trees with conspecifics and how ...
Study: "Following the Letter of the Law: 2020–2021 Retention Outcomes Under Michigan’s Read by Grade Three Law"
Authors: Andrew Niel Utter (Michigan State University), John Westall (Michigan State University), Katharine O. Strunk (Michigan State University)
Embargoed until: 12:01 a.m. CT Friday, April 14
This study will be presented at the place-based component of the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Session: Minding the Gap in Accountability Policy Implementation
Date/Time: Friday, April 14, 2:50 p.m. – 4:20 p.m. CT
Main Findings:
Under Michigan’s “Read by Grade ...
With the goal of fostering awareness and identifying strategies to reduce bias within the medical genetics field and to improve health equity, members of the ACMG’s Social, Ethical and Legal Issues (SELI) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committees collaborated to address factors in which bias can occur in clinical genetic testing in a just-published statement, “Clinical, technical, and environmental biases influencing equitable access to clinical genetics/genomics testing: A points to consider statement of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG)”.
This is the first joint statement of the ACMG’s ...
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Cancer Center researchers will present research abstracts on several COE initiatives at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023, held in Orlando, Florida, April 14-19.
Encouraging ...
Young babies and newborn mice can naturally heal damage to the bones that form the top of the skull, but this ability is lost in adults. In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Pittsburgh researchers developed a novel approach that promoted bone regeneration in mice without implantation of bone tissue or biomaterials.
The technique uses a device similar to an orthodontic wire used to realign teeth to carefully stretch the skull along its sutures, activating ...
When it comes to height, our fate is sealed along with our growth plates—cartilage near the ends of bones that hardens as a child develops. Research publishing April 14 in the journal Cell Genomics shows that cells in these plates determine the length and shape of our bones and can hint at our stature. The study identified potential "height genes" and found that genetic changes affecting cartilage cell maturation may strongly influence adult height.
"The study is really understanding ...
Associate Professor Jonathan Boreyko leads a team at Virginia Tech that has built a strong portfolio of work with ice and water, exploring the possibilities for de-icing planes, building novel water harvesting devices, and creating snow globes out of bubbles. This familiarity with water has given the team a strong sense of its behavior in different states, leading to a new project that shows how ice quenches heat in comparison to water. The findings were published in Chem on April 14.
Mojtaba Edalatpour and master’s student Camryn ...
Chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, asthma, HIV infection, and mental illness may be greatly undertreated in the U.S. jail and prison population, suggests a new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
For their analysis, the researchers used national health survey data covering 2018 to 2020 to estimate rates of chronic conditions among recently incarcerated people, and a commercial prescription database to estimate the distribution of medication treatments to the jail and prison population. Their analysis suggests ...
About The Study: In a study of matched pairs of counties that reopened with in-person versus virtual instruction at the secondary school level in the 2020 to 2021 academic year, counties with in-person school instructional models early in the COVID-19 pandemic experienced increases in county-level COVID-19 incidence at six and eight weeks after in-person reopening, compared with counties with virtual instructional models.
Authors: Meredith Matone, Dr.P.H., of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The ...
