Access to addiction meds for young people has improved — but retention hasn’t — SkimNews
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- Scott Hadland's study in JAMA Network Open analyzed Medicaid data for nearly 230,000 people ages 13 to 25 diagnosed with opioid use disorder between 2016 and 2023, finding only 1 in 32 of those engaged in care continued medication for six months
- Federal law requires minors to have two documented 'failed' attempts at recovery without medication before starting methadone, and fewer than 10 minors received methadone over the entire study period—a number so low researchers had to suppress it for privacy
- Black and racially minoritized young people experienced worse attrition through every stage of care than their white peers, according to the study
- Overdose deaths among young people skyrocketed around 2019 into the early 2020s, with poisonings including overdose rising to the third-leading cause of death for those 19 and under
- The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a 2016 policy statement urging doctors to offer addiction medications to adolescents and young adults, and Hadland presented the findings at the AAP's annual conference on the day the study published
- Primary care physicians and pediatricians need to feel more comfortable prescribing buprenorphine, addiction doctors said, since few residential treatment facilities for adolescents actually offer it
Why it matters: With overdose now the third-leading cause of death for Americans 19 and under, the study exposes a stark gap between the AAP's 2016 push to expand medication access and reality: of nearly 230,000 young Medicaid patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder, just 1 in 32 stayed on medication for six months. Federal restrictions on methadone for minors compound the problem.
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