Abstract
Medication-assisted therapy (MAT) for opioid use disorders is an effective treatment strategy. Racial/ethnic and gender disparities in MAT utilization have been documented, but less is known about disparities in MAT outcomes. We used the Treatment Episodes Dataset–Discharges (TEDS-D; 2015– 2017) to identify outpatient treatment episodes with heroin or illicit opioids indicated at admission (n = 232,547). We used multivariate logistic regression to model the association between MAT and a reduction in opioid use between treatment admission and discharge. We explored moderation by race/ethnicity and gender by including an interaction term. We identified a strong moderating effect of race/ethnicity and gender. American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) women demonstrated the strongest association between MAT (versus no MAT) and a reduction in opioid use (aOR = 6.05, 95% CI = 4.81– 7.61), while White men demonstrated the weakest association (aOR = 2.78, CI = 2.70– 2.87). Our findings could inform changes in clinical MAT settings that are based on harm reduction and the incremental transition from illicit opioids to medication-assistance among a diverse opioid use disorder population.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 186-194 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of Psychoactive Drugs |
Volume | 52 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 14 2020 |
Keywords
- Health disparities
- medication-assisted therapy
- opioids
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine (miscellaneous)
- General Psychology