-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email There’s a treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) that literally saves lives. It has been proven to reduce the risk of overdose death by as much as 60% and reduce the risk of any cause of death by half . It is also one of the oldest and most rigorously studied treatments for opioid use disorder: medication treatment with methadone or buprenorphine (also known as opioid agonist treatment, or OAT).
Since the start of the overdose crisis, serious efforts have been made to expand the availability of OAT. Federal agencies have been proactively removing barriers to OAT and allocating resources to its expansion. OAT is also a core strategy that can be funded with the billions of dollars obtained by local communities through the global opioid settlement .
Despite all this, tens of thousands of people are still dying annually. Estimates suggest that the number of opioid overdose deaths declined in 2023, but just barely, with more than 80,000 US lives lost to opioids in a single year. Related Why criminalization of drugs doesn't prevent overdoses This past year, my colleagues and I set out to explore this contradiction: why, when we have treatments that are proven to prevent overdose death, are so many people still dying? To do so, we homed in on residential treatment centers across the state of North Carolina, where many North Carolinians living with OUD expect to receive guidance, support and – naturally – lifesaving medical treatment.
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