The August 2022, Volume 41, Issue 18 of the Statistics in Medicine journal includes a publication from Biostatistics adjunct faculty, Ashley Buchanan and professor and department chair, Joe Hogan. The paper is:

Toward evaluation of disseminated effects of medications for opioid use disorder within provider- based clusters using routinely collected health data

Authors: Ashley Buchanan, Tianyu Sun, Jing Wu, Hilary Aroke, Jeffrey Bratberg, Josiah Rich, Stephen Kogut, Joseph Hogan
Pages: 3449-3465 | First Published:08 June 2022

What often begins as treatment for pain management, evolves into opioid use disorder (OUD) and eventual mortality. While the mechanism by which patients prescribed opioids may face OUD has been documented, the impact of OUD treatment on the health outcomes of other patients within provider-based networks is less well known. Patients within provider-based networks likely exert social influence on each other’s treatment preferences due to shared providers and geographical proximity, which could impact social norms around opioid use and OUD treatment. In this work, we used causal inference methods to evaluate OUD treatment on overdose of the person treated and others who also have the same provider using routinely collected health data.  This study provides preliminary evidence that, in addition to increasing the number of OUD treatment prescribers, increasing the number of patients treated within prescriber practices could offer additional benefits among patients with OUD.