Prescription Drugs & Other Medical Products

This brief assesses whether and how rates of substance use and substance use disorder (SUD) among adults (ages 18 and older) differ by race and ethnicity. The authors combine five years of data, 2015-2019, from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to create sample sizes large enough to examine specific racial and ethnic groups for specific categories of drug use.

Contingency management (CM) is an evidence-based psychosocial therapy for the treatment of stimulant use disorder, as well as a variety of other substance use disorders (SUDs), that is supported by three decades of research. Despite CM’s great potential and demonstrated effectiveness in improving the health and well-being of many people with SUDs, this proven treatment remains underutilized.

Drug manufacturers may change the list prices of their drugs at any time after launch. Over the period from January 2022 to January 2023, more than 4,200 drug products had price increases, of which 46 percent were larger than the rate of inflation. The average drug price increase over the course of the period was 15.2 percent, which translates to $590 per drug product.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is helping people with Medicare afford their medications, including the 2.1 million Asian, 5.8 million Black, and 5.3 million Latino Part D enrollees. These fact sheets review existing research to present the projected impacts of key IRA Medicare drug-related provisions for these populations.

Development of novel antimicrobials has slowed, and the preclinical and clinical pipeline is likely to be insufficient to support current and future patient needs.

Emergency departments (EDs) are key partners in filling the gap between people who need opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment and people who ultimately receive it.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to negotiate prices directly with participating manufacturers for selected drugs that are high expenditure, single source drugs without generic or biosimilar competition.

The market for antimicrobial (AM) drugs is unique in that it is associated with a positive externality (public health) as well as a negative externality (antimicrobial resistance, or AMR) (Mossialos, et al., 2010). AMR occurs when microbes change over time and no longer respond to available medicine.

In 2017, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S. acquired serious infections with bacteria that are resistant to one or more antimicrobial drugs and 35,000 have died as a result. Resistance to antimicrobials is viewed as a global threat with antimicrobial drug use in human and animal health driving resistance.

Introduction