# Prevention Research Center: Parenting Among Women Who Are Opioid Users

> **NIH NIH P50** · UNIVERSITY OF OREGON · 2022 · $73,449

## Abstract

7. PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 The United States is experiencing an opioid epidemic of historic significance, with over 40,000 deaths from
overdose in the past year. The economic costs of the epidemic in 2015 alone were estimated at over $500
billion, and in 2017 the US Department of Health and Human Services designated the opioid epidemic as a
public health emergency. National-level epidemiological data indicate that the rates opioid misuse, addiction,
overdose, and fatalities are increasing at a particularly fast rate among women, and among individuals in child-
bearing and child-rearing age groups. Opioid-using behaviors among women who are parenting can have
significant detrimental effects on their parenting, parent-child relationships, and downstream effects on child
brain development, health, and subsequent risk for drug use. The lack of a strong scientific knowledge base
about effective strategies for reducing opioid abuse and addiction in this population is a gap of enormous
consequences given the well-established effects of substance use on parenting skills, and the known effects of
maternal opioid use on infant development. The limited research on this topic that does exist suggests that
family-focused treatment approaches may hold the greatest promise, but the interventions that have been
developed to date have limitations in terms of scalability. In addition to a need for scientific research on this
topic, there is a parallel need to make reliable information available to researchers, policy makers, and the
general public. The overall goal of the Prevention Research Center: Parenting Among Women Who Are
Opioid Users (PWO Center) is to improve the well-being of individuals, families, and communities affected by
the opioid crisis through a focus on behavioral (parental responsivity, warmth) and neurocognitive systems
(e.g., executive functioning, reward responsiveness) that are underlying mechanisms common to both
addiction issues and parenting challenges. The PWO Center's Research Projects and Cores are based upon a
unifying conceptual model and employ a translational science approach in which basic science investigations
of underlying mechanisms are leveraged in the development and evaluation of scalable interventions that are
designed to deliver population-level impacts on policy and practice. Our multidisciplinary investigative team has
been conducting research on family-based parenting interventions for families with substance use histories for
the past 20 years and has a long and productive history of collaboration and productivity. We have strong
support for the proposed PWO Center from our state governor, our community partners, and our university
leadership. The anticipated long-term, public health outcomes of the PWO Center are to improve evidence-
based prevention of substance abuse, reduce maternal opioid misuse and addiction, reduce intergenerational
transmission of drug addiction, increase scientific understanding and public...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10690271
- **Project number:** 3P50DA048756-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
- **Principal Investigator:** Philip A Fisher
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $73,449
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2022-06-01 → 2024-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10690271

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10690271, Prevention Research Center: Parenting Among Women Who Are Opioid Users (3P50DA048756-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10690271. Licensed CC0.

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