# Consortium to Disseminate and Understand Implementation of Opioid Use Disorder Treatment

> **NIH VA I50** · VA CONNECTICUT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM · 2021 · —

## Abstract

Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among Veterans and a high-priority
target for quality improvement in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Effective medications for OUD
(MOUD) are available but uptake of them has been highly variable across VHA. Additionally, VHA has been at
the forefront in the U.S. in promoting alternative therapies for pain, but these are not consistently available to
Veterans in great need of them: those with chronic pain and harmful opioid use. VHA, through its Office of
Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, has made access to MOUD for all Veterans who need it a system-wide
priority. However, successful implementation of complex care processes that face myriad barriers requires
intentional, structured, evidence-based implementation efforts carried out by expert teams in close partnership
with local leadership.
 As such, the overarching goal of this project – the Consortium to Disseminate and Understand
Implementation of Opioid Use Disorder Treatment (CONDUIT) -- is to unite five inter-related VISN/QUERI pilot
Partnered Implementation Initiative projects in a concerted effort to improve access to MOUD among Veterans
with OUD and access to alternative therapies for pain in 57 VHA sites spanning six VISNs. CONDUIT will span
four critical care settings in the OUD continuum of care: Primary Care; Specialty Care; Acute Care (inpatient
and Emergency Department); and Telehealth. These efforts will be connected by Veteran Engagement,
Implementation, and Quantitative/Economic Cores that will help CONDUIT teams harmonize on metrics,
processes and outcomes. There will also be a Strategic Advisory Group composed of Operations leaders and
Veterans that will help CONDUIT remain maximally aligned with VHA and Veteran priorities. CONDUIT will
also offer sites the opportunity to implement new evidence-based practices (i.e. ones that were not part of
initial launch) in the latter half of the project period.
 The methods deployed by each of the CONDUIT teams will be similar: expert “external facilitation” teams
will lead partnered “internal facilitation” teams at local sites in a process called “Implementation Facilitation (IF)”
– a multi-component suite of tools aimed to help the sites effectively adopt evidence-based practices. The five
projects piloted and systematically modified IF strategies in Phase 1 and now propose to disseminate those
sharpened strategies on a national scale over the next three years, including two new VISNs and dozens of
additional sites. In terms of evaluation, CONDUIT will use well-established formative evaluation methods to
assess the effectiveness of and to drive refinements to the IF strategies. Additionally, CONDUIT will use
cutting edge quantitative methods to assess the impact the work on important clinical targets and to assess the
value of the work in terms of costs vs. benefits. Throughout the project period, teams will develop and refine
products such as patient an...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10181067
- **Project number:** 5I50HX003009-02
- **Recipient organization:** VA CONNECTICUT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
- **Principal Investigator:** WILLIAM C BECKER
- **Activity code:** I50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-10-01 → 2022-09-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10181067

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10181067, Consortium to Disseminate and Understand Implementation of Opioid Use Disorder Treatment (5I50HX003009-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10181067. Licensed CC0.

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