“While much of the research being conducted as part of the National Institutes of Health’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative has been put in a ‘hibernation state’ for now thanks to COVID-19, NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, and Nora Volow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse took Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit attendees through an overview the project’s goals and progress thus far on Thursday.”
“More than $900 million was distributed through HEAL to fund research on how various agencies can work together to improve prevention and treatment for opioid misuse and addiction, as well as enhance pain management. Several studies have been put on hold, Volkow said, as researchers have been diverted to other projects and/or limited in their access to the populations they had been studying in light of social distancing.”
“’The issue here is how can we become creative and use virtual technologies to try to advance some of the goals we aim to achieve?’ Volkow said.”
“Collins said chronic pain was a major focus of HEAL—’We don’t want the 25 million to 30 million who deal with chronic pain every day to be neglected in the process of trying to reduce opioids’—and that researchers are exploring devices, mindfulness and other non-pharmacological interventions…”
Methamphetamine use on the rise
“Volkow said deaths involving methamphetamine use have increased five-fold within the past six years, and cocaine-involved deaths are also on the rise. Lessons learned from the opioid crisis—how agencies can collaborate, how healthcare systems and community treatment programs can integrate, how virtual technologies can help—have put the industry in a better position to respond to the growing concern around methamphetamine, Volkow said…” Read the full article here.
Source: HEAL Initiative Slowed by COVID-19, but NIH Still Making Advances – By Tom Valentino, April 16, 2020. Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Learning Network.
