$1 Billion Grant Awarded to Fight Addiction and Chronic Pain

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $945 million to battle addiction and chronic pain. The grant will be used to fund research by 375 grantees in 41 states designed to guide future efforts. Some of the research projects include one to Dartmouth College to study ways of initiating drug treatment in hospital emergency rooms rather than days later at treatment centers, a second that will help a small company test a device worn on the wrist to detect biomarkers for stress and cravings to determine how long people need to continue treatment, a third that will look at best practices for the care of hundreds of thousands of infants who have been born to mothers who use opioids during pregnancy, and a fifth that will test the effectiveness of acupuncture on low-back pain for which Medicare will now pay.

The grant is part of the $9 billion Congress has devoted to treatment and prevention of opioid abuse in the last three years, which is funded under the NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-Term initiative.