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1. Pharmacists should treat patients who have opioid use disorders, not police them

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japh.2021.06.019  

   Chiarello, Elizabeth ( November 2021 , Journal of the American Pharmacists Association)
2. Zoom-Based Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement Plus Just-in-Time Mindfulness Practice Triggered by Wearable Sensors for Opioid Craving and Chronic Pain

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02137-0  

   Garland, Eric L. ; Gullapalli, Bhanu T. ; Prince, Kort C. ; Hanley, Adam W. ; Sanyer, Mathias ; Tuomenoksa, Mark ; Rahman, Tauhidur ( June 2023 , Mindfulness)
3. Championing awareness of the opioid epidemic through a service-learning module for non-STEM biology majors

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1155659  

   Fleming, Ryleigh ; Adkins, Sarah J. ; Esteban, Marco ; Cross, Cinnamin ; Chatham, Amy Hutson ; Raut, Samiksha A. ( December 2023 , Frontiers in Education)

   Over 50,000 people die annually from opioid overdoses in the United States leading to what has become known as the “opioid epidemic.” This is of heightened concern in states like Alabama that experience higher rates of overall drug use and overdose deaths. Thus, it is increasingly important for college students in Alabama to learn about how the opioid epidemic is affecting their communities. Previous studies have demonstrated that engaging non-majors in innovative active-learning oriented pedagogies like service-learning can enhance their understanding and awareness about contemporary societal issues. Despite its pedagogical potential, the impact of opioid-related service-learning, particularly for non-majors, continues to remain unexplored. In this study, we describe the implementation of a service-learning module centered on opioid addiction. Students in a non-major biology course learned the science behind opioids, had Naloxone training, and engaged in active discussions with an opioid researcher, physician, and former illicit opioid user. Our assessment of the thematic analysis of pre- and post-reflection free-write data from 87 consenting students revealed 10 categories that students reported in the post- but not pre-reflections (essay gain), pre- and post-reflections (neutral), and pre- but not post-reflections (essay loss). We found essay gains in students humanizing addiction and awareness of the cultural context of opioid addiction and essay losses from students indicating that non-major students had a low level of awareness related to these issues. Eight one-on-one, semi-structured interviews revealed that students were personally impacted by the epidemic and valued its curricular inclusion. Our data supports that service-learning can increase non-major biology student’s awareness and contextual understanding about the opioid epidemic, enabling much-needed advocacy to further enhance its awareness among the public.

    

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4. PRISTINE: Semi-supervised Deep Learning Opioid Crisis Detection on Reddit

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ASONAM55673.2022.10068721  

   Alhamadani, Abdulaziz ; Sarkar, Shailik ; Alkulaib, Lulwah ; Lu, Chang-Tien ( November 2022 , IEEE)
5. Understanding the factors related to the opioid epidemic using machine learning

   https://doi.org/10.1109/BIBM52615.2021.9669486  

   Gavali, Sachin ; Chen, Chuming ; Cowart, Julie ; Peng, Xi ; Ding, Shanshan ; Wu, Cathy ; Anderson, Tammy ( December 2021 , IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine)

   In recent years, the US has experienced an opioid epidemic with an unprecedented number of drugs overdose deaths. Research finds such overdose deaths are linked to neighborhood-level traits, thus providing opportunity to identify effective interventions. Typically, techniques such as Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) or Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) are used to document neighborhood-level factors significant in explaining such adverse outcomes. These techniques are, however, less equipped to ascertain non-linear relationships between confounding factors. Hence, in this study we apply machine learning based techniques to identify opioid risks of neighborhoods in Delaware and explore the correlation of these factors using Shapley Additive explanations (SHAP). We discovered that the factors related to neighborhoods’ environment, followed by education and then crime, were highly correlated with higher opioid risk.We also explored the change in these correlations over the years to understand the changing dynamics of the epidemic. Furthermore, we discovered that, as the epidemic has shifted from legal (i.e., prescription opioids) to illegal (e.g., heroin and fentanyl) drugs in recent years, the correlation of environment, crime and health related variables with the opioid risk has increased significantly while the correlation of economic and socio-demographic variables has decreased. The correlation of education related factors has been higher from the start and has increased slightly in recent years suggesting a need for increased awareness about the opioid epidemic. 

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