Dec 2024
Expanding Access to Addiction Treatment
This paper explores practical strategies to expand access to addiction treatment for persons living with opioid use disorders (OUDs).
This paper explores strategies to expand practical access to evidence-informed addiction treatment interventions among persons living with substance use disorders—particularly persons living with opioid use disorder (OUD), who face remarkable risks of death in the shadow of an escalating overdose epidemic. Almost 100,000 Americans die every year from fatal overdoses. Despite recent declines, more than 70,000 of these deaths involve opioids. Expanding practical access to effective treatments, particularly to medications for OUD (treatments denoted MOUD by addiction treatment providers and researchers), is a central challenge in addressing the overdose epidemic.
Latest Updates
Combining Mentorship and Therapy, Program Aims to Prevent Teen Violence Before It Happens
Matt Masterson for WTTW News covers the Crime Lab’s study of Choose to Change, a six-month intervention that combines “near-peer” mentorship and cognitive behavioral therapy to help steer teens away from violence and get them back on a more successful track.
In Chicago, cognitive behavioral therapy shows promise curbing youth violence
NPR’s Meg Anderson reported on Chicago’s Choose to Change (C2C), a program that combines trauma-informed therapy with wraparound supports and aims to reduce youth violence. The Crime Lab found that the program can effectively and sustainably reduce violence involvement and the likelihood of being arrested.
Coming April 21, 2025 – Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig authored a book that argues the lack of progress in reducing gun violence ultimately stems from our having misunderstood the nature of the problem, and that behavioral science gives us a new way to understand – and solve – gun violence in America.
