APHA Annual Meeting 2020

RTI COVID-19 Research + Response

RTI helps partners build resilient health systems and improve public health. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working quickly to lessen its impact on the individuals and communities we serve. RTI offers extensive experience addressing public health threats and improving the underlying systems where they occur and the effects they leave in their wake. Our researchers provide new data and insights into COVID-19.

RTI Essential Part of Initiative for Accelerating Research on Possible COVID-19 Treatments

RTI announced that it has been selected to collaborate in an initiative to understand the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and identify therapies that will slow or halt the disease progression and speed recovery. Referred to as Collaborating Network of Networks for Evaluating COVID-19 and Therapeutic Strategies, or CONNECTS, the initiative is being led by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Combine Synthetic Population and Other Available Data for Accurate and Actionable Community Impacts Using the RTI COVID-19 Data Insights Tool

New pandemic data is released daily and a quick search for “COVID-19 data” provides millions of results and countless tools. How do you determine if the data gives you an accurate, comprehensive view of your community? How do you create action plans from the data for your community? The RTI COVID-19 Data Insights Tool gives those in charge of the public health crisis response access to COVID-19 data and the ability to cross-compare it with socio-economic vulnerability factors to deliver hyperlocal insights.

Why Value-Based Care is Incomplete Without Considering Social Determinants of Health

In January 2018, a woman in Baltimore was found outside on a freezing cold night wearing nothing but a hospital gown and socks, having been recently discharged from a local hospital. Video of the event made national headlines, prompting an apology from the hospital and an investigation from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS’s reports highlighted several deficiencies in the circumstances that led to the woman’s situation. Remedying the deficiencies in the report may prevent another incident of inappropriate discharge, but they would do little to address the underlying causes that led to the woman’s plight, including poverty, mental illness, and housing insecurity.

RTI Opioid Research: Understanding, Preventing, and Treating Opioid Misuse

Each year, more than 28,000 Americans die from opioid overdoses. For more than 30 years we’ve studied the use of illegal drugs, including heroin and the nonmedical use of opioid pain relievers. Our experts are studying prevention and public communication tactics, strategies to reach out to at-risk and vulnerable populations, the scope of the opioid overdose epidemic and its economic impact, and the cost-benefits of various treatment programs. Our experts are also researching cutting-edge treatments for habitual opioid users as well as those dealing with chronic, unmanageable pain.

RTI Researchers Offer In-Depth Look at HEALing Communities Study in Special Journal Issue

Researchers at RTI have contributed to a special edition of Drug and Alcohol Dependence that features 10 papers detailing the ambitious HEALing Communities Study, an effort funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to reduce opioid-related overdose deaths by 40% in 67 communities across Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio.

RTI Wins NIDA Grant for a Study of Polysubstance Use to Inform Opioid Overdose Prevention

RTI recently won a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for a study on polysubstance use to inform opioid overdose prevention efforts. The three-year, mixed-methods study, led by Jennifer Lorvick, DrPH, will help researchers and policymakers better understand the motivations, contexts, and timing of polysubstance use (including alcohol use) among people who use opioids, which will help refine overdose prevention efforts during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.