Employment Trajectories among Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: Can Evidence-Based Treatment Improve Outcomes? Employment Trajectories among Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: Can Evidence-Based Treatment Improve Outcomes?

By Mary A. Burke, Riley Sullivan, Katherine Carman, Hefei Wen, J. Frank Wharam, and Hao Yu

The current confluence of labor shortages and record-setting opioid mortality highlights the need to better understand the relationship between opioid use and employment. In addition, it prompts the question of whether effective treatments for opioid use disorder (OUD) might not only save lives but also improve the employment prospects of OUD patients. Using administrative records of Medicaid enrollees in Rhode Island that link their health-care information with their payroll employment records and other data sources, this paper produces new stylized facts concerning the association between OUD and employment and inquires as to whether treatment with FDA-approved medications boosts the job-finding rates of OUD patients.

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