FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 16, 2025
Contact: Gina DiGravio, 617-358-7838, ginad@bu.edu
BU Awarded Funding to Improve Treatment Access for Opioid Use Disorder
(Boston)—Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine has been awarded funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The funding award will support a study, “Comparing treatment use, retention, and patient outcomes pre- and post-implementation of federal policy changes regulating buprenorphine and methadone treatment for opioid use disorder,” led by Nicholas A. Livingston, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry.
The “gold-standard” treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) combines FDA-approved medications, primarily methadone and buprenorphine, with behavioral therapies to provide “whole-patient” treatment. To prevent health care disruption and expand access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) treatment during the COVID-19 public health emergency, federal and state authorities, and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), implemented several policy changes to reduce barriers to MOUD initiation and retention.
“In a prior PCORI-funded study, we found that the intended benefits of MOUD policy changes were not fully realized in the first year of the pandemic. Fewer patients than expected received life-saving treatment, while rates of opioid relapse and fatal overdose increased substantially. This new study will evaluate the long-term effects of these policy changes, which have been implemented variably throughout the country, and help us identify where and for whom we can advocate for more patient centered practices. Our findings will have clear implications for policy and implementation in health systems throughout the U.S.,” explains Livingston, who also is a Principal Investigator in the VA’s National Center for PTSD, Behavioral Science Division, VA Boston Healthcare System.
This study is among several PCORI has funded focused on examining the longer-term outcomes of interventions in comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER). This award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI and issuance of a formal award contract.
Livingston received his PhD from the University of Montana and completed his pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at VA Boston Healthcare System. His research focuses on increasing access to, and improving the quality of, substance use disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment, and modeling risk to prevent relapse, overdose, and suicide using “big data.”
Livingston is a core research training faculty member for the Boston University National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) T32 grant, VA Inter-professional Advanced Fellowship in Addiction Treatment, VA Medical Informatics Fellowship, and other psychology training programs at VA Boston Healthcare System. Livingston also mentors early career scientists and recipients of career development awards.