Characteristics of Medicaid-enrolled adolescents with unhealthy opioid or other substance use: substance use screening and treatment, health care visits, and involvement with school and other institutions from 2015 to 2019
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Urban Institute research report
- Author(s):
- Clemans-Cope, Lisa, author Lynch, Victoria, author Winiski, Emma, author Epstein, Marni, author Payton, Maya, author
- Contributor(s):
- Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, December 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Adolescent Medicaid Opioid-Related Disorders Substance-Related Disorders United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Substance use, including unhealthy opioid use, is a major contributor to morbidity and mortality among adolescents in the United States (Ammerman 2019). Adolescence, the developmental period between childhood and adulthood, is an intense period of social, emotional, and identity development accompanied by changes in the brain that can be affected by substance use. And substance use can have immediate and long-term adverse consequences, particularly for early initiators (NASEM 2019). Substance use is common among adolescents. In 2019, 29 percent of adolescents in grades 9 to 12 reported current alcohol use, 22 percent reported current marijuana use, and 7 percent reported current unhealthy opioid use, which includes the spectrum from risky opioid use to opioid use disorder, or OUD (Jones 2020). Drug overdoses were the sixth leading cause of death among children and adolescents in 2016, with more than half due to opioids (Cunningham, Walton, and Carter 2018). Risks associated with unhealthy opioid use often emerge during adolescence and include factors beyond opioid use, such as mental health; use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other substances (Barnett et al. 2019; Darke, Torok, and Ross 2017); and higher levels of nonmedical prescription opioid use among secondary school classmates (McCabe et al. 2020). Preventing or delaying unhealthy opioid use initiation among youth can reduce later risk for OUD (Office of the Surgeon General 2018). In this study, we provide new detail on the demographic characteristics of and substance use among Medicaid-enrolled adolescents and by different types of unhealthy opioid use and other substance use. We address the following research questions: (1) What is youth’s involvement with schools, prevention programs, pediatric care providers, mental health providers, and, for youth with substance use, treatment? (2) How do rates of screening differ across youth with different substance use and demographic characteristics and among those seen in an emergency department (ED), outpatient setting, or inpatient setting? Understanding these adolescents’ characteristics, involvements, and gaps in care is critical to designing comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, and effective Medicaid policy related to substance use to support adolescents’ healthy development.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (27 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918367873806676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918367873806676