Research from Mathematica Reveals New Findings on Opioids (Opioid Use Among Social Security Disability Insurance Applicants): Opioids

2024 FEB 21 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators publish new report on opioids. According to news reporting originating from Chicago, Illinois, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Our study is the first to provide statistics on opioid use among Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applicants.”

Funders for this research include Social Security Administration.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Mathematica: “We use an innovative machine-learning method to identify opioids in open-ended text fields in SSDI administrative data. We find that more than 30% of applicants between 2007 and 2017 reported using one or more opioids, a rate that is about 50% higher than in the general population. Rates of reported opioid use varied over time, peaking at 32% in 2012.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Reported opioid use also varied by age, gender, education, receipt of SSI, and across states. There was a positive and statistically significant association between (a) reported opioid use and SSDI awards and (b) reported opioid use SSDI award and death; these are associations and do not demonstrate a causal relationship.”

For more information on this research see: Opioid Use Among Social Security Disability Insurance Applicants. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 2024. The publisher for Journal of Disability Policy Studies is SAGE Publications.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/10442073241228838.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting April Yanyuan Wu, Mathematica, Chicago, IL, United States. Additional authors for this research include Denise Hoffman, Paul O’Leary.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)