NIH is announcing a $36 million, five-year investment in research to reduce the overdose epidemic and improve care access for people who use drugs through the establishment of a harm reduction research network. The network, funded by the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative (NIH HEAL Initiative) through the National Institute on Drug Abuse, begins this year with nine research grants and one grant to establish a coordinating center. The projects funded by these grants will test harm reduction interventions so that we can develop evidence-based actions to help prevent overdoses and save lives. Research projects will also assess how well some existing harm reduction programs work, with concrete endpoints like overdose rates. And they will test novel harm reduction approaches meant to gather data on what works, what doesn’t, and acceptability in communities.

Read the full article at National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)