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Program objective

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Use data-driven insights to inform action.

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The challenge

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national opioid use map

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Opioid misuse and abuse in the U.S. has risen dramatically in recent years. Yet health experts lack a broad framework for evaluating the impact of wide-scale prevention, treatment and management efforts. Problems and progress have been difficult to discern. 

This is the kind of challenge that OptumLabs was designed to work on. Seeking a solution, we convened experts from across the health care system and used claims data to develop a dashboard of 29 key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify trends: problems, gaps and bright spots related to the opioid crisis.

 

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Our role

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The resulting KPIs span four domains — prevention, pain management, OUD treatment, and maternal and child health — and have been the catalyst for innovative research and translation efforts among diverse stakeholders within our collaborative and beyond.

A sampling of our work within these domains includes:

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prevention

Prevention

Prescribing of extended-release opioids in non-opioid tolerant patients

FDA│Mayo Clinic│OptumLabs│Yale

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pain management

Pain management

Conservative therapies for low back pain as antidote to opioid use

American Physical Therapy Association│Boston University│OptumLabs│UnitedHealthcare

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OUD treatment

OUD treatment

Comparative effectiveness of OUD treatment pathways

Boston Medical Center│Massachusetts General Hospital│Optum Behavioral Health│OptumLabs

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maternal and child health

Maternal and child health

Neonatal abstinence syndrome collaborative model

Optum Labs│State of Tennessee│UnitedHealthcare Community & State

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Opioid Insights for Action Day

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Experience our event where experts convened to share ideas and partner to help reverse the opioid epidemic. Watch videos.

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Collaborators

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Research collaborators

  • Mayo Clinic
  • University of California, San Francisco 
  • University of California, Davis
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Harvard Medical School
  • Boston University School of Public Health
  • Boston Medical Center
  • Massachusetts General Hospital 
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 
  • Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 
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Opioid expert advisory panel

  • Thomas McLellan, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
  • Mark Wallace, MD, University of California San Diego
  • Munish Gupta, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, NeoQIC
  • Rob Saper, MD, Boston University School of Medicine and Public Health
  • Kun Zhang, PhD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Prescription Drug Overdose-Health Systems Team
  • Ellen Meara, PhD, Dartmouth College
  • Yngvild Olsen, MD, American Society of Addiction Medicine (FASAM)
  • Joji Suzuki, MD, Harvard Medical School; Brigham and Women's Hospital
  • Paul Christo, MD, Johns Hopkins University
  • Michael Hooten, MD, Mayo Clinic
  • Molly Jeffery, PhD, Mayo Clinic
  • Don Schwarz, MD, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  • Audra Stock, LPC, MAC, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
  • Julie Mae Fritz, PT, PhD, University of Utah
  • Gary Franklin, MD, University of Washington
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Research sponsors

  • American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) 
  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  • UnitedHealthcare