While more insured Americans under 25 years old are being diagnosed with opioid use disorder than ever before, many may not be receiving the medical treatment they need, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
To identify possible disparities in the treatment of opioid use disorder with the anti-addiction medications buprenorphine or naltrexone, researchers examined health insurance claims data on 20,822 patients between 13 and 25 years old diagnosed with opioid use disorder between 2001 and 2014. Among these patients, only 27 percent were prescribed buprenorphine or naltrexone.
Additionally, researchers observed gender and racial disparities regarding the prescription of these medications. Females were less likely than males to be prescribed the medications — blacks and Hispanics were less likely than whites to be prescribed the treatments. The researchers could not pin down the exact cause of these disparities, but suggested unequal access to care and physician bias could play key roles.
"The take-home message for parents is: If you have a child struggling with opioid addiction, understand that there are medications that support and sustain recovery," Scott Hadland, MD, one of the study's authors and an addiction specialist with Boston Medical Center, told CBS News. "Even though all the youth in our sample had access to high-quality health insurance, they may not have had equal access to high-quality addiction care."
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