Santa Monica-based RAND Corp. announced Monday the creation of a research center aimed at identifying policies to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic, thanks to a $7.2 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a program of the National Institutes of Health.
“The opioid crisis is dynamic and our understanding of policy effects is evolving, but not as fast as the crisis itself,” said RAND scientist Dr. Bradley D. Stein, who will direct the Opioid Policy Tools and Information Center. “Combating the opioid crisis requires developing ways to help decision-makers identify which policies are most effective and under what circumstances.”
Stein said the center will also identify policies that have had little effect, or those that may have been well-intentioned, but wound up having ” unintended negative consequences.” For example, RAND researchers determined previously that a reformulation of the pain medication OxyContin wound up driving a shift to heroin use in 2010 and a subsequent rise in the spread of hepatitis C.
According to RAND, the new center will develop methods of assessing the impact of various policies and determining why some are more effective in some areas than in others.