The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) is soliciting investigator-initiated research that will support the identification and rigorous evaluation of effective strategies that link people in recovery for illicit substance use disorders
to at least one evidence-based recovery support service available within their community, and, if needed, re-link people to such services following resumption of illicit substance use.
Research is needed to evaluate strategies that are tailored to the individual to increase recovery capital and maintain recovery, or initiate return to care, among people with illicit substance use disorders through linkage to programs and services that help support recovery over time (i.e., recovery support services).
Recovery support services can improve the quality of personal relationships among patients with illicit substance use disorders, increase the number of low-risk people in their social networks, and provide access to tangible resources such as training and employment opportunities to support and sustain their long-term recovery.
For the purposes of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), “recovery ecosystem” is defined as available recovery support services in a community tailored to the needs of the individual.
Linkage to recovery ecosystems to meet individual needs may include connecting people to multiple recovery support services that work together, potentially multiple times, and rigorous evaluation can help to identify replicable strategies to accomplish such linkages.
The focus of this NOFO is on understanding the effectiveness of strategies to link people who are in recovery, or re-link people following resumption of illicit substance use, to recovery support services across the social ecology that are available in their community to comprise a recovery ecosystem tailored to the needs of the individual.
This NOFO is intended to support research on the following objective:
Conduct a process and outcome evaluation of linkage strategies, programs, or policies that link people in recovery for illicit substance use disorders to at least one evidence-based recovery support service available within their community and, if needed, re-link people to such services following resumption of illicit substance use.
A rigorous evaluation, inclusive of both a process and outcome evaluation, should be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the linkage strategies that facilitate continued access to a recovery ecosystem on impacting key health outcomes, including, but not limited to, maintaining recovery, re-linking people to care, and preventing overdose.