By UNC Health Care
Researchers from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine will collaborate with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the Durham County Sheriff’s Office to implement and evaluate two new opioid addiction treatment programs for people in the criminal justice system.
Both of these projects are part of a new initiative by the National Institutes of Health that created a network to improve opioid addiction treatment in criminal justice settings. The NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse awarded 12 grants totaling an estimated $155 million to form the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network to support research on quality addiction treatment for opioid use disorder in criminal justice settings nationwide.
Carolina will collaborate with the Department of Public Safety to link people in community supervision in Brunswick County to medication-assisted treatment via peer support specialists. Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an assistant professor in the department of social medicine, is a co-principal investigator for this project, which is funded under NIDA’s $10.8 million grant to Brown University.
| UNC-CH