Opioid & Substance Use

The University of Michigan launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to help providers understand every facet of the opioid crisis.  

This free, self-paced open learning course is designed primarily for non-prescribing healthcare, behavioral health, dental and social services professionals, as well as graduate-level students in these fields, although other professionals including physicians and medical students will benefit from taking the course.

Opioid Solutions , a collaboration between IHPI, the Injury Prevention Center, and the U-M Office of Research, serves as a central hub for U-M research, educational activities and community outreach related to opioids. On the site, users can browse education and research projects, researchers, centers and publications to see the infrastructure and scope of work that allows U-M to facilitate collaborations with local, state and national partners around opioid overdose prevention.

Yet with little guidance available to prescribers, overprescribing is a widespread issue, contributing to the nation's opioid epidemic as well as the problem of millions of leftover pills vulnerable to diversion into communities.

What does U-M research show about ways to reduce risk associated with opioid prescribing? This research brief offers some insights.