# The Effect of Medical Cannabis Laws on Health Care Use in Insured Populations with Pain-S1

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA · 2021 · $569,151

## Abstract

Project Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially disrupted routine healthcare and exacerbated existing barriers to
healthcare access for the population. Our proposal will provide new evidence on the impact of the COVID-19
pandemic for a particularly vulnerable population: postpartum women. Approximately two-thirds of women
report pain that interferes with Activities of Daily Living at 24 hours postpartum; 6 to 18% of women experience
chronic pain after delivery. Thus, disruption to routine healthcare has the potential to substantially worsen pain
and subsequent health for postpartum women.
Our proposed study will examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on postpartum women’s pain-related
healthcare utilization, with specific focus on the prescription of opioid analgesics at hospital discharge after
delivery and during the subsequent six-month postpartum period. In addition, we will examine the extent to
which the impact of the pandemic differed systematically for women with versus without access to recreational
or medical cannabis, thus building on preliminary evidence that there is substitution away from opioid analgesic
prescriptions in states that implement recreational and medical cannabis laws.
Our analyses will leverage data from two large secondary data sources: Optum claims data and HealthJump
electronic medical records data, in conjunction with data on active cannabis dispensaries and U.S. Census
data. We will employ a patient-level panel data approach to examine changes in healthcare utilization that
coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, controlling for individual patient characteristics, state and
county time-varying characteristics, and state fixed effects. In addition, we will interact our measure of
pandemic exposure with measures of access to legal cannabis and conduct sub-analyses in which we allow for
potential differential effects by delivery type (vaginal or Cesarean), by prior opioid use, and by urban versus
rural residence.
These novel analyses will provide the first longitudinal, patient-level analysis of the relationship between
COVID-19 and pain-related healthcare utilization for postpartum women, as well as the first evidence on the
interaction between legal cannabis access and utilization of prescription pain medication among postpartum
women. Understanding these relationships is essential in order to optimize public policies and to provide
guidance to clinical practitioners on mitigation of long-run impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10393350
- **Project number:** 3R01DA047365-03S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
- **Principal Investigator:** W David Bradford
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $569,151
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-07-01 → 2022-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10393350

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10393350, The Effect of Medical Cannabis Laws on Health Care Use in Insured Populations with Pain-S1 (3R01DA047365-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-29 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10393350. Licensed CC0.

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