Rapidly Assessing the Public Health Impact of Emerging Opioid Threats

Overview

The Research Need

The opioid crisis is constantly evolving as new and increasingly dangerous drugs, such as fentanyl and related opioids or nitazene opioids and others, enter the supply. Development and distribution of new analytical methods and tools such as reliable test strips are urgently needed to identify novel substances in the drug supply. The inability to detect new drugs results in underestimates of their prevalence and a lack of vision into the consequences of these new threats.

About the Program

This program develops validated analytical methods and tools that can detect emerging drug threats in clinical and forensic settings and that can also be used for harm reduction purposes.

The program also supports research to distribute validated assays to detect emerging drugs, toward standardizing the quality of information gathered across jurisdictions.