A newly awarded $1 million U.S. National Science Foundation grant will allow a group of multidisciplinary researchers at Penn State, in collaboration with Georgia Tech, to develop an early warning system for identifying and responding to emerging substance use threats such as the rise of fentanyl overdoses in our communities.
The Penn State Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction recently hosted its fourth annual conference in the HUB-Robeson Center at the University Park campus.
Penn State researchers recently participated in COSSA Social Science Advocacy Day, held in Washington, D.C., to advocate for the social and behavioral sciences research community.
Accurate reporting on causes of death has direct impacts on mortality data, policy making, and setting priorities in public health. A Penn State-led project aims to educate coroners, medical examiners, and others in the death certifier community in Pennsylvania about the reporting of accidental overdoses due to substance use to help local governments better respond to public health issues.
Interactive gaming, or online gambling, became legal in Pennsylvania in 2017. In the first assessment of how this policy change is impacting Pennsylvanians, a recently released report by Penn State researchers and the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs found that approximately 1 in 10 Pennsylvanians engage in interactive gaming.
Criminal justice data is under-utilized in research despite its high relevance and unique role in the opioid crisis, according to a recent study by Penn State researchers using crime incident data. The study found that opioid-related crime incident rates were positively associated with rates of opioid-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations and overdose mortality.
