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Principal Investigator: Rosalie Liccardo Pacula
Organization: RAND CORPORATION
Fiscal Year: 2024
Award: $1,176,489
Funding agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
DATA & METHODS CORE ABSTRACT
Researchers and policymakers need better data, improved methods, and rigorous analysis to best determine
which policies and initiatives are, or could be, effective in addressing the nation’s opioid-related public health
crisis. Research assessing the effectiveness of specific opioid policies and initiatives has surged, but much of
this work uses accessible existing policy datasets and familiar difference-in-difference and interrupted time
series analysis. Multiple studies have identified shortcomings of these methods in the presence of
heterogeneous treatment effects and policy endogeneity. Furthermore, while researchers have begun to pay
greater attention to inconsistencies in how opioid policy data are defined and operationalized, far less attention
has been given to the differential impacts the same policies have on different communities in light of
vulnerabilities and structural factors that lead to differential policy experiences. There is also increasing
evidence that the community environment itself influences opioid misuse and harm, raising questions about
how effective different opioid policy strategies might be given interactions with local factors. These conceptual
and methodological challenges need to be clearly defined and communicated to all those working in this policy
space. As a national resource, OPTIC has actively addressed this need, and OPTIC’s Data & Methods Core
(DMC) plays an essential role in that effort. Internally, the DMC maximizes the efficiency and quality of Center
work by providing the data, tools, and methodological support necessary to conduct high-quality, innovative
research. Externally, the DMC is a reliable resource for the scientific community, providing data to support
studies of policy effects and community vulnerabilities, publishing educational resources on data and methods
to enhance the rigor of such studies, conducting trainings for junior investigators developing research in this
area, and disseminating information on best methodological practices for evaluating policies affecting opioid-
related outcomes. The DMC will continue updating, tracking, gathering, and documenting opioid-related
policies and their specific components and timelines on a state-by-year basis (2000-2027). We will update our
comprehensive literature review on the use and/or effectiveness of federal and state policy approaches to the
opioid crisis, retaining our focus on the methodological rigor of the evaluations with additional attention to
differential effects of policy by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and types of drug misuse affected by the
policy. We will identify, construct, and assess metrics that capture the high risk of discriminatory
implementation and enforcement of opioid policies within communities, and we will continue to assist the
OPTIC community in the development and testing of new methods for dealing with complex and dynamic policy
environments.
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