# Developing Methodological Tools to Strengthen Concurrent State Opioid Policy Evaluation

> **NIH NIH P50** · RAND CORPORATION · 2021 · $229,823

## Abstract

Project Summary
The opioid crisis has led to a steady increase in the number of opioid overdose deaths, which currently number
nearly 100 a day. States have enacted heterogeneous sets of policies to curtail the crisis. As states continue to
grapple with how to allocate resources to reduce the crisis, high-quality evaluation studies are crucial to
identifying the most effective policies. This study seeks to provide opioid researchers with clear statistical
guidance and novel statistical methods to conduct complex, high-quality policy evaluations.
There are several key challenges faced in current evaluations that this project will address. One is the issue of
how best to select an appropriate control group – this is crucial for valid estimates of the impact of policies, as
states implementing a given policy may be fundamentally different than states that do not. A second key
challenge is the dynamic nature of the policy landscape, as states enact and modify various policies on a
rolling basis to address the evolving crisis. While states often enact a co-occurring set of reforms, these
policies are often evaluated individually. Yet, failure to account for the co-occurrence of another policy that
targets the same outcome may yield a biased estimate of a given policy. Furthermore, potential additive or
synergistic effects of co-occurring policies can only be identified by examining the interaction of the two policies
jointly which in turn will require sufficient sample sizes to allow for estimation of the needed effects. Identifying
optimal statistical methods is critical as suboptimal statistical methods (e.g., suboptimal regression
specification, lack of testing assumptions, minimal adjustment for confounding, short evaluation windows) may
produce inaccurate inferences that misrepresent the magnitude or even direction of true policy effects.
In this project, we will provide a comprehensive summary of the state of the statistical science in the opioid
policy space. We will also create a series of simulation tools that will inform and improve the methods opioid
policy researchers and policy researchers more broadly utilize to determine which policies are most effective at
helping decision makers deal with the opioid (and future crises). These tools will provide the groundwork for
subsequent research, in which the simulation results and infrastructure can be leveraged to better assess
which types of policies or policy combinations are most effective in reducing opioid-related harms. Finally, we
will develop novel statistical methods to address the complexities of identifying robust control states and
evaluating co-occurring policies. This project’s methods development work will provide opioid (and more
broadly, addiction) researchers with more appropriate methods for obtaining unbiased estimates of policy
effectiveness from longitudinal observational data.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10220921
- **Project number:** 5P50DA046351-04
- **Recipient organization:** RAND CORPORATION
- **Principal Investigator:** Beth Ann Griffin
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $229,823
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-08-15 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10220921

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10220921, Developing Methodological Tools to Strengthen Concurrent State Opioid Policy Evaluation (5P50DA046351-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10220921. Licensed CC0.

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