A man says goodbye to his girlfriend before leaving for opioid addiction treatment.Credit: Todd Heisler/eyevine

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than US$350 million to four research teams that will test ways of reducing accidental deaths from opioid use. The scientists will conduct their work in four states: Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. A fifth group, at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, will coordinate the overall effort.

The goal is to reduce opioid-overdose deaths by 40% in 3 years, and to create a blueprint that communities across the United States could use, NIH director Francis Collins said at a press conference on 18 April.

The effort is part of the opioid-research strategy that the NIH introduced in 2018. Researchers who received the latest grants will work with public-health agencies, the criminal-justice system, schools, pharmacies and other groups in the study communities. They will test the effectiveness of several strategies for curbing opioid abuse and deaths; these include distributing drugs that can reverse opioid overdoses —such as naloxone — and programmes that connect people who have been convicted of drug crimes with addiction treatment.

Working simultaneously with different community groups — including government agencies, medical professionals and citizens — could help to curb the opioid crisis, Collins said. “This approach of trying to optimize one component at a time hasn’t solved the problem.”