AHRQ Grant Announcements Update

The 3 areas are all ones where UNC has experience:

1. Evaluating state, local, and health system policy efforts to address the opioids crisis: Many state and local governments and large health systems are enacting policies to address the opioid crisis, including improving pain management. There is enormous potential to learn from these local experiences and provide evidence-based guidance to policymakers about the effects, including understanding the unintended consequences, of new policies. AHRQ is interested in supporting rapid-cycle, high-quality evaluations of policy interventions and strongly encourages collaboration with policy implementers (including government agencies and health systems) within proposals.
2. Developing and evaluating interventions to prevent progression to opioid use disorders in people who are misusing or have experimented with opioids: While there are evidence-based interventions, including medication-assisted treatment, for people with opioids use disorder, far less is known about how health care delivery systems can assist people who have used opioids non-medically but are not addicted.
3. Understanding and addressing the rapid increase in opioid-related hospitalizations among older adults. AHRQ data have demonstrated that prescription opioids use has increased among adults 65 years of age and older with a corresponding increase in the rates of opioid-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations. The reasons for the high use of opioids and the adverse effects among the elderly are not widely understood and interventions to address the opioid crisis targeting the needs of younger adults and heroin users may not be applicable to this population.

The following new grant-related items have been posted:

Special Emphasis Notice (SEN): AHRQ Announces Interest in Health Services Research to Address the Opioids Crisis

AHRQ Implementation of the Burden-Reducing Provisions of the 2018 Common Rule