Research Question How does the presence of life altering impacts of opioid use differntiate across New Jersey counties? Furthermore, how does the availability of Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) facilities relate to this prevalence of life altering impacts of opioid use?
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Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT)
Life Threatening Impacts of Opioid Use
Accessibility to Treatment
MAT facilities use three specific pharmacological therapies to treat opioid addiction: methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone. In addition to providing medication, these facilities monitor patients throughout their treatment. A growing body of literature has found that treatments provided in this type of environment are more effective at treating opioid addiction an reducing relapse rates.
This study uses the phrase, “life threatening impacts of opioid use� to operationalize the detrimental impacts of the opioid epidemic on populations. Two variables have been aggregated to quantify rates of life threatening impacts of opioid use: drug related deaths as caused by opioids as well as drug related hospital visits caused by opioid use.
Research into the effectiveness of opioid treatment and proximity to treatment facilities has found that patients who had to travel 1 mile or less had the highest likelihood of completing treatment, between 1 and 4 miles had a moderate chance of completing treatment and after 4 miles chances of completion were dramatically decreased.
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