The goal of the proposed fellowship is to prepare the applicant, Noa Krawczyk, for an independent research career focused on improving access to and effectiveness of services for the prevention and treatment of substance use disorders. To this end, the proposed fellowship consists of two complementary components: (1) A research project that aims to assess the relationship between receipt of opioid agonist therapy in specialty treatment settings and risk of opioid overdose and criminal justice involvement; and (2) a training plan composed of mentored research, didactic and informal training, experiential learning and professional development activities. The applicant will be supported by several resources at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and by a strong mentorship team with expertise in health services research, addiction medicine, the intersection of substance use and criminal justice, and advanced statistical methods. The research-training plan will allow Ms. Krawczyk to prepare for a research career by a) Learning and applying rigorous epidemiological and statistical methods; b) developing expertise in opioid use disorder treatment and services; and c) generating and disseminating scientific knowledge to inform public health practice. The proposed research project is of high
The proposed study will be one of the first to use United States databases to link mortality, criminal justice, and drug treatment records to generate evidence on how opioid agonist treatment administered in usual care settings modifies risk of adverse opioid events in the state of Maryland. This study will allow us to better understand the landscape of opioid agonist treatment utilization in the community and the extent to which it is protective against overdose and criminal involvement in settings where persons often cycle through periods of care. Findings will help expand the literature on the effectiveness of medications in usual-care settings and can be used to directly inform the design of more effective treatment systems that assure quality care and minimize risk for adverse outcomes.
