(Press-News.org) New Study Key Takeaways:
New model focuses on more equity and accessibility in opioid overdose treatment locations and resource allocation.
Utilizing this model, the results project that within 2 years, there will be a decrease in the number of people with opioid use disorder, an increase in the number of people getting treatment and a decrease in opioid-related deaths.
Policymakers should target adding treatment facilities to counties that have significantly fewer facilities than their population share and are more socially vulnerable.
BALTIMORE, MD, October 15, 2024 – The opioid epidemic is a crisis that has plagued the United States for decades. One central issue of the epidemic is inequitable access to treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), which puts certain populations at a higher risk of opioid overdose.
New research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management provides socioeconomically equitable solutions by utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization. It’s the first research of its kind to target the opioid crisis and identify solutions on a state-by-state level.
“Our proposed solution focuses on equitability and access to treatment facilities based on state data. We found that applying the recommendations from our integrated AI and optimization approach, on average, could decrease the number of people with opioid use disorder (OUD), increase the number of people getting treatment and decrease the number of opioid-related deaths within 2 years,” says Joyce Luo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The study, “Frontiers in Operations: Equitable Data-Driven Facility Location and Resource Allocation to Fight the Opioid Epidemic,” was conducted by Luo alongside Bartolomeo Stellato of Princeton University.
“Our recommendations consider how socially vulnerable each county is within a state, which is important to ensure greater socioeconomic equitability for the allocation of facilities across that state,” says Stellato.
The researchers say that this approach, guided by epidemiological and socioeconomic factors, could help inform strategic decision-making. Compared to alternative approaches based solely on population and social vulnerability, this approach leads to a greater reduction in overdose deaths and the number of people with OUD.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 500,000 people have died from overdoses involving both illicit and prescription opioids from 1999 to 2019. Currently, the main treatment for OUD is medication-assisted treatment (MAT), which has been proven to sustain patient recovery and prevent future overdoses.
Although access to these treatment medications has expanded in the last decade, there are still major gaps in access across the United States, especially in rural areas with underdeveloped health infrastructures.
“The epidemic evolves differently in different states, and policies related to opioid treatment should be reflective of the needs of each state. It is critical to have tailored policies; this is not a one-size-fits-all issue. By optimizing treatment facility locations and budget allocations at the state level, there is potential to significantly improve health outcomes,” concludes Luo.
Link to full study.
About INFORMS and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
INFORMS is the leading international association for data and decision science professionals. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, one of 17 journals published by INFORMS, is a premier academic journal that covers the production and operations management of goods and services including technology management, productivity and quality management, product development, cross-functional coordination and practice-based research. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs.
###
Contact:
Ashley Smith
443-757-3578
asmith@informs.org
Subscribe and stay up to date on the latest from INFORMS.
Sign Up For Email Update
END
Key takeaways
Voting eligibility for people with felony convictions has expanded since 1997, with more than two million individuals now able to vote.
Several factors, like misinformation, distrust of government or lack of clarity around procedures, impede many from exercising their right to vote.
Direct outreach, including through trusted, on-the-ground community organizations, as well as informational text messaging, can help eligible voters navigate the process and make sure their voices are included in elections.
As get-out-the-vote efforts hit high gear nationwide, a team of sociologists, political scientists ...
Alzheimer’s disease may damage the brain in two distinct phases, based on new research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using sophisticated brain mapping tools. According to researchers who discovered this new view, the first, early phase happens slowly and silently — before people experience memory problems — harming just a few vulnerable cell types. In contrast, the second, late phase causes damage that is more widely destructive and coincides with the appearance of symptoms and the rapid ...
Advancements in quantum information technology are paving the way for faster and more efficient data transfer. A key challenge has been ensuring that qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information, can be transferred between different wavelengths without losing their essential properties, such as coherence and entanglement. As reported in Advanced Photonics, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) recently made significant strides in this area by developing a novel method for broadband frequency conversion, a crucial step for future quantum networks.
The SJTU team focused on a technique using X-cut thin film lithium niobate ...
Aston University is leading a new £5.5 million EU research project
Will focus on converting fibre-optic cables into sensors to detect natural hazards
Could identify earthquakes and tsunamis and assess civil infrastructure.
Aston University is leading a new £5.5 million EU research project to explore converting existing telecommunication fibre-optic cables into sensors which can detect natural hazards, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, and assess the condition of civil infrastructure.
The project is called ECSTATIC (Engineering Combined Sensing and Telecommunications Architectures for Tectonic and Infrastructure Characterisation) ...
About The Study: Existing evaluations of large language models mostly focus on accuracy of question answering for medical examinations, without consideration of real patient care data. Dimensions such as fairness, bias, and toxicity and deployment considerations received limited attention. Future evaluations should adopt standardized applications and metrics, use clinical data, and broaden focus to include a wider range of tasks and specialties.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD, email nigam@stanford.edu.
To ...
About The Study: Strong oversight by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects the long-term success of industries by focusing on evaluation to advance regulated technologies that improve health. The FDA will continue to play a central role in ensuring safe, effective, and trustworthy AI tools to improve the lives of patients and clinicians alike. However, all involved entities will need to attend to AI with the rigor this transformative technology merits.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Haider J. Warraich, MD, email haider.warraich@fda.hhs.gov.
To ...
Researchers have shown that larger insects such as woodlice and beetles play as much of a crucial role in leaf litter decomposition across different habitats and seasons as microbes and smaller invertebrates.
The research, published today as a final Version of Record after previously appearing as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, was described by editors as a fundamental study that substantially advances our understanding of the role of different-sized soil invertebrates in shaping the rates of leaf litter decomposition. The authors provide compelling evidence that the summed effects of all decomposers on decomposition rates, with large-sized invertebrates being ...
The inaugural Art and Science of Total Synthesis of Natural and Designed Molecules for Biology and Medicine (ASTS-NDM 2024) symposium brought together some of the world’s most renowned organic chemists Oct. 2-4 at the historic Club de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. Hosted by Rice University’s Global Paris Center , the event explored the evolving role of synthetic organic chemistry and total synthesis of natural and designed molecules in fields such as medicine, materials science and chemical biology.
The three-day symposium attracted leading figures in synthetic organic chemistry, featuring 18 speakers who presented ...
In Miami—a place known for one of the most diverse tree canopies in the world—nearly half of the native trees may struggle to survive in the coming decades, a new University of Miami study indicates.
Due to global warming, temperatures may simply become too hot for some of the types of trees that dominate the city’s current landscape, like live oaks, slash pines, and cabbage palms.
But the research also found that strategically planting more tropical trees may help the local canopy stay resilient in the face of climate change.
Through an extensive data analysis project, a team of ecologists in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences discovered ...
CAMBRIDGE, MA – Active electronics — components that can control electrical signals — usually contain semiconductor devices that receive, store, and process information. These components, which must be made in a clean room, require advanced fabrication technology that is not widely available outside a few specialized manufacturing centers.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of widespread semiconductor fabrication facilities was one cause of a worldwide electronics shortage, which drove up costs for consumers and had implications in everything from economic growth to national defense. The ability to 3D print an entire, active electronic ...
