A growing number of health care institutions across California offer medication-assisted treatment with funding and support from the state’s MAT Expansion Project, which started in 2018 and is financed by $265 million in federal grants. Numerous studies have shown that relapse and overdose rates are lower among opioid users who get MAT than those who don’t. From 2016 to 2018, for example, the overdose death rate in Humboldt County — one of California’s highest ― dropped by about half, which officials attributed in large part to the MAT Expansion Project. But the number of new people brought into treatment is only a small fraction of those who need it. The state effort faces many of the same obstacles that have hindered wider acceptance of MAT for years: the stigma of addiction, federal regulations that depress the number of MAT providers, and hostility in some corners of the treatment community to the very notion of using drugs to combat drug addiction.
Read the full article: California’s New Attack on Opioid Addiction Hits Old Roadblocks //
Source: https://khn.org/news/californias-new-attack-on-opioid-addiction-hits-old-roadblocks