With a $65.9 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to address Ohio’s opioid epidemic, a consortium of academic, state and community partners—including nine faculty researchers from ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½â€”aims to reduce overdose deaths statewide by 40% over the next three years.
The new initiative, called Optimizing Healing in Ohio Communities (OHiO) and led by Ohio State University, is part of the NIH HEALing Communities Study. The effort will use research to focus on prevention, treatment and recovery programs in the state, which has been hit especially hard by opioid deaths. In 2017, Ohio’s opioid overdose death rate of 47.9 per 100,000 people ranked second worst in the nation, with Cuyahoga County recording 512 overdose deaths—the highest among the state’s 88 counties. The study will focus on 19 highly affected Ohio counties.
Michael Konstan, vice dean for translational research at the School of Medicine and PI of the CTSC, will lead the consortium’s effort in Northern Ohio. According to Konstan, ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ is responsible for implementing OHiO in Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Huron, Lucas, Stark and Williams counties. Collectively, in 2017 these six counties accounted for 44% of opioid overdose deaths in the 19 selected counties.