Q: Penn State’s Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction is helping Pennsylvania counties decide how best to use funds from a national
opioid settlement. Let’s start with the settlement itself.
SEGEL: Every state that signed on to the settlement will use the funds received in different ways. In Pennsylvania, 70% of funding goes directly to counties, 15% goes to the state, and 15% goes to sub-litigating entities, the townships and cities that also sued the manufacturers and distributors of opioids. All in, Pennsylvania received around $2 billion that’s in a trust and is to be used over 20 years.
Q: And what’s the CSUA’s role in that process?
SEGEL: Our goal is to leverage our expertise to bring evidence-based research on substance misuse and treatment to decision-makers in various counties to help them decide how these funds can be spent to improve community health and safety. We have scientists, people working on the clinical side, people working on treatments for individuals and families, and we have social scientists. We’re also co-leading an Elevate Pennsylvania Initiative, which is bringing together researchers across Penn State, and we’re partnering with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Temple University who, similarly to our researchers here, have done a lot of the work on evidence-based approaches to both treatment and prevention.
Q: Can you share some examples of these approaches?
SEGEL: Our researchers have been studying machine learning techniques to understand shifts in patterns of drug use. We’ve done work in the treatment space, particularly on developing innovative treatment for women with substance use disorder and co-occurring mental illness. We’ve also got colleagues in Hershey working on GLP-1s for treatment and partnering with key stakeholders to set up vending machines for harm reduction.
Q: What are some of the main challenges the opioid epidemic still poses?
SEGEL: At almost every step along the continuum, there is still work to do. These days, you’ve got potentially more complex mixes of substances that can make treatment more complicated. I don’t think we’ve completely solved the stigma problem. We need to do more on harm reduction. And substance use is rarely the only condition a person has; there are a lot of co-morbid behavioral health needs. We have to pair treatment and prevention—and meet patients where they are. That doesn’t mean just coming up with the next best prescription drug. It also means understanding community and individual needs.
Joel Segel is an associate professor of health policy and administration and director of the Penn State CSUA.
