Connection, Navigation, Engagement in Care and Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder (ConNECT)

Linkage Navigation to Enhance Initiation and Engagement in Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder to Prevent Overdose

The overarching goal of the study is to develop, pilot, and evaluate an intervention that aims to retain patients who initiate buprenorphine at Denver Health in ongoing treatment for opioid use disorder.

Initiating patients identified with opioid use disorder in hospital settings onto buprenorphine is a relatively new strategy to prevent overdose. While the literature is beginning to amass showing the effectiveness of this strategy for initiating people into treatment, a dearth of data to describe how well people are maintained in treatment remains. The current research project aims to 1) develop an intervention to enhance engagement and retention in treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder who initiate buprenorphine at Denver Health and 2) assess acceptability, feasibility, and initial efficacy of an intervention to enhance engagement and retention in treatment for individuals with opioid disorder compared to usual care.

Defined by proportion of participants retained in care at 90 days, as measured by the total number of intakes where patient has continued to be engaged in medication assisted treatment at 90 days from start of treatment divided by the total number of intakes where patients linked to follow up dosing or prescription, for each arm.

Inclusion Criteria: 18 years and older inducted onto buprenorphine at Denver Health successfully completed an intake visit at Denver Health's Outpatient Behavioral Health Services clinic. Exclusion Criteria: unable to provide informed consent unable to provide detailed contact information previously enrolled in the current study pregnant women will be excluded given that they are a priority treatment population and receive special services