Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder: A National Study Comparing Criminal Justice and Community Samples

Background: Medication coupled with psychosocial treatment and support is the most effective approach to treating opioid use disorder (OUD). However, treatment needs outweigh availability in the U.S., leading to empirical questions about health equity across subsets of the population.Methods This research compares characteristics related to receipt of medications for OUD (MOUD) across treatment episodes referred by the criminal justice system and those referred by other sources, utilizing 639,199 cases from the 2018 U.S. Treatment Episode Data Set-Discharges.Results MOUD receipt was more than twice as likely in the non-criminal justice sample than the criminal justice sample (33% compared to 15%, respectively). The impact of demographics, substance use, need for and characteristics of treatment, and access to treatment on MOUD receipt vary considerably across the two samples.Conclusions Understanding characteristics that inhibit and facilitate MOUD access can strengthen the public health approach to intervention, particularly for justice-involved individuals.