Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) Study

Purpose

  • In 2022, an estimated 6.1 million people ages 12 or older reported having an opioid use disorder (OUD).
  • Common treatment options for OUD include medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) (including methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone) and counseling without medication.
  • CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control conducted a study of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) to better understand treatment engagement and factors that may influence treatment experiences and outcomes.
Female Doctor And Patient Consultation

MOUD study objectives

The objectives of this 18-month observational cohort study in outpatient settings without random assignment to OUD treatment were to:

  1. Identify factors that influence the type of OUD treatment offered to patients and the patient's treatment choice.
  2. Better understand patient and outpatient treatment facility factors associated with key OUD treatment outcomes.
  3. Identify relevant antecedents or co-occurring conditions that could be addressed through primary prevention.
  4. Inform evidence-based practices and OUD treatment policies.

Types of data

The collected data are available for the public to access. The publicly available data from the MOUD Study include:

  • Type of OUD treatment
  • Substance use
  • Drug overdose
  • Health-related quality of life
  • Socioeconomic status
  • Side effects (e.g., patients reported experiencing an adverse reaction to the current or most recent MOUD treatment)
  • Resources utilization (e.g., patients reported receiving peer-to-peer recovery support services)
  • COVID-related information (e.g., patients reported completing the survey during the COVID-19 pandemic)
  • Distance to treatment facility
  • Treatment facility ID
  • Region of treatment facility
  • Mortality outcomes

Patients from around the United States were included

All sites were outpatient treatment facilities.1 Information about individual treatment site will not be released to protect patient and staff privacy.

Cities included in the study:

  • Birmingham, Alabama
  • Boston, Massachusetts
  • Chicago, Illinois
  • Cincinnati, Ohio
  • Dallas, Texas
  • Denver, Colorado
  • Huntington, West Virginia
  • Los Angeles, California
  • New York, New York
  • Phoenix, Arizona
  • Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
  • Salt Lake City, Utah
  • San Francisco, California
  • Seattle, Washington
  • Washington, DC Metro Area

Data collection methods

Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)‎

In 2022, an estimated 6.1 million people ages 12 or older reported having an opioid use disorder (OUD) in the past year.2

The MOUD Study was a longitudinal, observational cohort study. The study sample included 1,974 adults with opioid use disorder (OUD) receiving various types of OUD treatment at 62 outpatient facilities over 18 months.

  • Participants were followed from March 2018 through May 2021.
  • The types of OUD treatment included MOUD (i.e., methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone), or counseling without MOUD.
  • Patients in this study were asked to complete five web-based, self-administered questionnaires—baseline and follow up at 3-, 6-, 12-, and 18-months post-baseline.

The response rate was 100% at baseline, 72% at 3 months, 68% at 6 months, 52% at 12 months, and 53% at 18 months.1

Researchers might consider imputation methods to deal with missing data. Researchers can use treatment facility ID to address the correlation between observations within the same treatment facility.

How the data is interpreted

Please note, CDC staff are unable to provide analytic or technical assistance to researchers who use this publicly available data.

Contact Information‎

For general questions and information about the publicly available MOUD Study Data, please contact the MOUD Study Data team at dopinquiries@cdc.gov with "MOUD Study Data" in the email subject line.

Published manuscripts using the MOUD Study Data:

  1. Dever, Jill A., et al. "The Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Study: Methods and Initial Outcomes From an 18-Month Study of Patients in Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder." Public Health Reports (2023): 00333549231222479. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00333549231222479
  2. Villamil, Vanessa I., et al. "Barriers to retention in medications for opioid use disorder treatment in real-world practice." Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment (2024): 209310. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949875924000225
  3. Nataraj, Nisha., et al. "Public Health Interventions and Overdose-Related Outcomes Among Persons With Opioid Use Disorder." JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(4):e244617. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.4617
  4. Jiang, Xinyi., et al. "Association Between Length of Buprenorphine or Methadone Use and Nonprescribed Opioid Use Among Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: A Cohort Study." Substance Use & Addiction Journal. 2024;0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29767342241266038

Data reporting

There are no costs for accessing the publicly available MOUD Study data.

Download Data Files, Patient Questionnaires, and Codebooks:

The MOUD Study Codebook

  • Contains a list of variables, their labels and distributions from baseline to 18 months post-baseline.

Patient questionnaires

  • Contains questions the enrolled patients were asked from baseline to 18 months post-baseline.

Publicly available MOUD Study Data:

Data quality

Data limitations can be found in the MOUD Study publications listed below.

  1. Dever, Jill A., et al. "The Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Study: Methods and Initial Outcomes From an 18-Month Study of Patients in Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder." Public Health Reports (2023): 00333549231222479. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00333549231222479
  2. Villamil, Vanessa I., et al. "Barriers to retention in medications for opioid use disorder treatment in real-world practice." Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment (2024): 209310. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949875924000225
  3. Jiang, Xinyi., et al. "Association Between Length of Buprenorphine or Methadone Use and Nonprescribed Opioid Use Among Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: A Cohort Study." Substance Use & Addiction Journal. 2024;0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29767342241266038

Resources

More information on:

Print
Content Source:
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
  1. Dever, Jill A., et al. "The Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Study: Methods and Initial Outcomes From an 18-Month Study of Patients in Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder." Public Health Reports (2023): 00333549231222479. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00333549231222479
  2. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2023). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP23-07-01-006, NSDUH Series H-58). Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2022-nsduh-annual-national-report