Stephanie Nichols, PharmD., associate professor in the School of Pharmacy, is part of a team of authors whose research on leveraging pharmacists to extend access to MOUD, particularly during the concurrent COVID-19 global pandemic was recently published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively impacted the opioid crisis and has worsened outcomes for people with opioid use disorder (OUD) as opioid-related overdoses have surged during the global COVID-19 pandemic.1-4 Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), including buprenorphine, methadone, and extended-release (XR) injectable naltrexone, are essential in reducing mortality and facilitating recovery.5 Changes to healthcare delivery to combat the spread of COVID-19 significantly threaten access to and continuity of MOUD therapy in this underserved population, which heavily relies on face-to-face interactions with both prescribers and pharmacists. The most concerning access restrictions are for opioid agonist treatments (OAT), buprenorphine (a partial opioid agonist), and methadone (a full opioid agonist), given their superiority to other MOUD in decreasing opioid-related mortality.6 Additionally, OAT maintain opioid tolerance, so without regular access patients may experience withdrawal symptoms, which could destabilize OUD treatment progress. To maintain and advance progress made in improving treatment initiation and retention, in addition to preventing opioid-related deaths, targeted strategies as well as broad policy change are needed to optimize access to OAT during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond (Box 1).