Learning from COVID-19 : how pandemic-era policies for methadone prescribing could improve opioid treatment Issue brief (California HealthCare Foundation) Suen, Leslie W., author. Nguyen, Oanh K., author. Knight, Kelly Ray, 1969- author. COVID-19 Methadone -- therapeutic use Opiate Substitution Treatment Opioid-Related Disorders -- drug therapy Drug Prescriptions Health Policy Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States was already seeing staggering numbers of drug overdose deaths, with over 70,000 people dying from an overdose in 2019. When the pandemic began in early 2020, in-person health care visits presented significant risk for COVID-19 infection and spread. Federal agencies took swift action to create sweeping, yet temporary, regulatory changes to opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment policy so that patients could maintain uninterrupted access to health care. Since the onset of the pandemic, racial disparities in overdose prevalence have widened in the state, with overdose deaths among Black people outpacing other racial groups in California. Statewide, counties including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego are facing unprecedented increases in overdose-related morbidity and mortality, in part due to the rise of illicitly manufactured fentanyl. Because both the COVID-19 pandemic and the overdose crisis have evolved in the past two years, re-examination of the role of addiction treatment in reducing opioid-associated morbidity and mortality and promoting health equity is needed. [Oakland, California] : California Health Care Foundation, April 2022 California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body. Technical Report Text 1 online resource (1 PDF file (8 pages)). nlm:nlmuid-9918573686306676-pdf 9918573686306676 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918573686306676 English California Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0