Hospital adoption of harm reduction and risk education strategies to address substance use disorders

ABSTRACT

Background: Hospitals are well-positioned to integrate harm reduction into their workflow. However, the extent to which hospitals across the United States are adopting these strategies remains unknown.

Objectives: To assess what factors are associated with hospital adoption of harm reduction/risk education strategies, and trends of adoption across time.

Methods: We constructed a dataset marking implementation of harm reduction/risk education strategies for a 20% random sample of nonprofit hospitals in the U.S (n = 489) using 2019–2021 community health needs assessments (CHNAs) and implementation strategies obtained from hospital websites. We used two-level mixed effects logistic regression to test the association between adoption of these activities and organizational and community-level variables. We also compared the proportion of hospitals that adopted these strategies in the 2019–2021 CHNAs to an earlier cohort (2015–2018.)

Results: In the 2019–2021 CHNAs, 44.7% (n = 219) of hospitals implemented harm reduction/risk education programs, compared with 34.1% (n = 156) in the 2015–2018 cycle. In our multivariate model, hospitals that implemented harm reduction/risk education programs had higher odds of having adopted three or more additional substance use disorder (SUD) programs (OR: 10.5: 95% CI: 5.35–20.62), writing the CHNA with a community organization (OR: 2.14; 95% CI: 1.15–3.97), and prioritizing SUD as a top three need in the CHNA (OR: 2.63; 95% CI: 1.54–4.47.)

Conclusions: Our results suggest that hospitals with an existing SUD infrastructure and with connections to community are more likely to implement harm reduction/risk education programs. Policymakers should consider these findings when developing strategies to encourage hospital implementation of harm reduction activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitals
• substance use disorders
• addiction
• opioid use disorders
• harm reduction
• buprenorphine
• community health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Osteopathic Heritage Foundation, The Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy at NYU Langone Health.