By Amy Berberyan and Talia Kruger
NEW YORK, NY – Approximately 86.6 percent of individuals who qualify for medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) do not receive it, highlighting a critical need to increase access and distribution of such services, according to a recent study.
The article, titled “Has the treatment gap for opioid use disorder narrowed in the U.S.?: A yearly assessment from 2010 to 2019″ and written by Noa Krawczyk, Bianca D. Rivera, Victoria Jent, Katherine M. Keyes, Christopher M. Jones, and Magdalena Cerdá highlights OUD prevalence and treatment from 2010 to 2019 on both federal and state levels within the United States.
Even past this timeline, the study maintains the epidemic regarding overdose deaths is gaining traction. The researchers added “the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this crisis, leading to historically high overdose deaths in 2020, with provisional data indicating continued increases in 2021.”
The study also indicates up to 75 percent of overdose deaths are due in part to opioids, and the crisis’ traction is far exceeding de-escalation efforts made by both state and national-level government initiatives. Population-based studies support the finding that “MOUD decreases overdose risk by 50 percent.”
Despite this considerably effective percentage, underuse of MOUD has limited its impact on public health, said the authors, adding while there is research being done to expand treatment capacity, “a gap…in our understanding of how actual MOUD receipt—rather than treatment capacity alone—has kept pace with U.S. OUD trends.” 
In order to estimate the prevalence of OUD in the U.S. in the past decade, researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis on state and national data through the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).
They noted, however, that while the study is nationally representative, it might fail to adequately represent the true number of individuals with OUD, given it excludes non-housed populations who may be more prone to develop OUD.
In order to correct results and filter out deaths from drug poisoning rather than overdose, sensitivity analysis was performed with regard to comparing NSDUH data to “an alternate adjustment approach that uses state drug overdose deaths rather than NSDUH data.
The MOUD treatment receipt was estimated through researchers collecting data from the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment (NSSATS), which keeps track of the number of individuals in Opioid Treatment Programs, and combining this data with the pharmacy prescription rates of Buprenorphine products.
National data paint a disheartening picture: while the number of individuals with OUD increased from 2,105,757 individuals in 2010 to 7,631,804 individuals in 2019, the number of individuals receiving medication for OUD only increased by 8.5 percent (95.1 percent not receiving MOUD in 2010 to 86.6 percent in 2019.)
On a statewide level, the gap between OUD prevalence and MOUD usage varied by state, with some seeing the gap narrow as medication became more widely available and others remaining relatively stable over the decade, researchers said.
What is, according to researchers, clear from the data is that much needs to be done to properly address the prevalence of OUD individuals and expand usage of MOUD, and a crucial step to closing the gap is by making MOUD more accessible to communities.
The authors concluded “improving initial access to MOUD is only the first step—our research and healthcare systems have a long way to go in addressing the needs of people with OUD to support retention in treatment and services to effectively reduce overdose and improve long-term health and well-being.” 
