# Development of a novel community-based high-performance surveillance network for drug use

> **NIH NIH DP2** · BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER · 2020 · $77,554

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Surveillance efforts for substance use are failing us. They rely on outdated risk prediction tools yet risk factors
for HIV and overdose are context-specific and are impacted by the interplay between patient-, provider-, and
system-level factors as well as epidemiologic realities in a community. They rely on direct estimation methods
for measuring prevalence yet barriers such as lack of access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD)
and harm reduction services, stigma, criminalization of drug use, and unaffordable housing prevent people who
use drugs (PWUD) from being counted. Additionally, they rarely involve community engagement and
surveillance data are not disseminated effectively to communities to achieve maximum benefit. In the context
of the ongoing overdose crisis and recent outbreaks of HIV among PWUD in Indiana, Massachusetts,
Kentucky, and West Virginia, the failures of this basic tool of public health take on a new urgency. The number
of efficacious programs and interventions to prevent and treat substance use and HIV continues to grow, but
without accurate estimates of the size of the pool of people at risk of overdose and for acquiring HIV and
knowledge of their specific risk factors, these interventions cannot reach their full potential. We cannot reach
people who we do not know exist and are at risk. We, therefore, need to immediately modernize and upgrade
our surveillance capacity to understand the size and composition of drug-using populations. I am proposing an
innovative, interdisciplinary research program that integrates epidemiology, community engagement,
biostatistics, econometrics, and information dissemination to create a novel community-based, high-
performance surveillance network for PWUD. I will do this by (1) creating a community engaged research
(CEnR) process around big data for PWUD; (2) building community-specific risk prediction algorithms for HIV
acquisition, disease progression, and loss to follow up among PWUD; (3) using enhanced indirect estimation
methods to determine the size of populations of PWUD and to evaluate the impact of interventions; and (4)
disseminating findings and translating research into action. The data centerpiece of this program will be the
Public Health Data Warehouse, an individually-linked database from more than 15 Massachusetts government
agencies, which includes more than 97% of the Massachusetts population. Preliminary analyses with this
database are underway and will be made accessible to communities in real-time. This project represents an
approach that is entirely divergent from traditional surveillance techniques by using a combination of complex
methodologies with the community always at the center of the process—from initiation to final output. This
novel Massachusetts cOMmunity-bAsed Drug use surveillANCE (“Moma Dance”) Network will begin in
Massachusetts, but will serve as a model for other states and jurisdictions as they contend with the failures of
...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10054384
- **Project number:** 1DP2DA051864-01
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Joshua Adam Barocas
- **Activity code:** DP2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $77,554
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-08-01 → 2021-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10054384

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10054384, Development of a novel community-based high-performance surveillance network for drug use (1DP2DA051864-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10054384. Licensed CC0.

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