Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital this week launched a new study to measure the effectiveness of a peer counseling program in Rhode Island for preventing opioid overdoses.
The study, funded by an $800,000 private foundation grant, will track how people at high risk of an opioid overdose respond to counseling by peers who themselves are in recovery from addiction. Researchers will compare the outcomes of those patients with others who are offered the traditional standard of care, a single session with a social worker.
Researchers plan to enroll 650 patients (325 in each group) who will be randomly assigned either to a peer “navigator” or a social worker. Researchers will then track the patients’ progress over the following 18 months. Progress will be measured by whether they enter into an addiction-treatment program within 30 days of joining the study. The study also will track patients to see if they have additional emergency department visits, overdoses and if they successfully complete a treatment program.
“Randomized controlled trials are really the gold standard for making evidence-based decisions,” Dr. Francesca Beaudoin, a principal investigator on the grant, said in a statement. Beaudoin practices at Rhode Island Hospital’s emergency department and teaches at Brown.
Unlike other randomized control trials of peer-led programs, this study focuses on patients at high risk of overdose, Beaudoin said in an email. It also differs from past trials in that participants are enrolled in the hospital emergency department following an overdose. Previous trials, she said, mostly have compared peer-led programs with 12-step programs or group therapy.
Rhode Island’s peer counseling program, called AnchorED, launched as a pilot in 2014, was modeled on recovery coaching in prisons. The program has become a national model for hospital-bed outreach to drug overdose survivors. Similar programs are not operating in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York City.
The research is supported by a grant the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, run by a Houston-based couple who fund a variety of projects, including ones aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.
