For patients with advanced cancer, pain is a common and disabling symptom for which opioids remain a mainstay of treatment. The current epidemic of opioid misuse and addiction has led to widespread changes in opioid-related policies, and the impacts of these policies on patients with advanced cancer near end of life are not well understood. This project, led by PaRC faculty member Dr. Yael Schenker, and Dr. Lindsay Sabik, will seek to understand those policies and their impacts, with a goal of informing how state-level opioid policies can be structured to ensure safe and equitable opioid access for the roughly 600,000 adults who die from cancer annually in the United States.
(Funding Source: NIH/Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. 1R01HS029170-01)