Kimberly Yonkers, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases) and of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services, and Ariadna Forray, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, are co-principal investigators on a new $5.5 million grant to study models to improve delivery of office-based medication treatment for pregnant women with opioid use disorder in prenatal clinics.
The four-year project will recruit 12 obstetrical centers and enroll 480 pregnant women total. The goal is to train obstetrical providers in the provision of buprenorphine for pregnant women with opioid use disorder in reproductive clinics.
Yonkers and Forray will compare the effectiveness of two models of support for reproductive health clinicians who will provide office-based medication treatment for pregnant women with opioid use disorder:
- A collaborative care (CC) approach based on the Massachusetts Office-Based-Opioid Treatment Model that would provide onsite training and support to providers through the use of a care managers and telepsychiatry;
- A tele-support approach modeled on the Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO), a remote education model that provides mentorship and guided practice and participation in a learning community via video conferencing.
Half of the centers and patients will be randomized to each condition.
The primary goal of the study is to determine whether there are differences between women who are cared for in the CC condition vs the ECHO condition in starting and remaining in treatment for opioid use disorder in pregnancy
The grant was awarded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).