# Health Systems Node of the NIDA Clinical Trials Network

> **NIH NIH UG1** · KAISER FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE · 2020 · $123,552

## Abstract

Project Summary. Primary care (PC) is well-positioned to detect and address substance use (SU) and
substance use disorders (SUDs), yet most PC settings have notable gaps in providing SU-related care. One
way to improve SU-related care is to use standardized measurements to screen for unhealthy SU and to
assess SUD symptoms, which informs clinical care by detecting unhealthy SU, assessing SUD severity,
informing decisions about SUD treatment intensity, and monitoring clinical outcomes over time. Researchers
and national agencies are increasingly calling for the use of standardized measures of unhealthy SU and SUD
symptoms in routine PC settings; however, surprisingly little is known about how such measures perform when
they are used in the context of routine PC—i.e., administered in routine appointments and documented in
electronic health records (EHRs). We propose to leverage a large and novel EHR dataset from Kaiser
Permanente Washington, a large integrated regional health system. The dataset will include standardized
measures of the frequency of cannabis and other drug use, completed as part of an annual screen by
>450,000 patients annually (91% of adults who attend PC appointments as of Feb. 2020), and a novel patient-
reported SUD symptom checklist that is based on the DSM-5 SUD criteria (“DSM-5 checklist”) for patients who
reported daily cannabis use (~19,089 unique patients) or past-year illicit drug use (~6,075 unique patients).
This 1-year study includes psychometric analyses that evaluate the DSM-5 symptom checklist as a scaled
measure of SUD severity and the consistency of its performance across demographically diverse subgroups.
To our awareness, this is the first study to evaluate any standardized patient-reported SUD symptom measure
integrated into routine PC. This research will improve clinical care by helping providers and patients
understand the information provided by these scaled patient-reported measures with regards to substance use
and SUD-related risk. The work will also provide a foundation for future studies that use patient-reported EHR-
based measures in pragmatic studies, implementation trials, and quality improvement initiatives.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10231808
- **Project number:** 3UG1DA040314-06S2
- **Recipient organization:** KAISER FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE
- **Principal Investigator:** Katharine Anthony Bradley
- **Activity code:** UG1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $123,552
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2021-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10231808

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10231808, Health Systems Node of the NIDA Clinical Trials Network (3UG1DA040314-06S2). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10231808. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*