Grant: Project Grant

In response to the rise of opioid-related harms across Canada, several provinces have announced substantial investments into residential treatment facilities for opioid use disorder. Most recently, the Ontario Government announced investments of $90 million (2022) and $124 million (2024) to expand residential treatment bed capacity, despite a lack of provincial standards for service provision or robust evidence of these service's safety and effectiveness. Limited available data in Ontario suggests significant variability in the quality of care provided across residential treatment facilities, and whether patients are provided with access to medication-based treatment, which has the strongest evidence for treating opioid use disorder. With governments shifting towards residential treatment-focused approaches across the country, it is important to address this urgent knowledge gap on the quality of residential treatment services to ensure that Canadians receive access to the best care available. Therefore, we propose a body of work that will use newly available data from the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Information System, which captures information on all publicly funded addiction services in Ontario, to generate robust evidence on the quality and safety of residential treatment services. The proposed research will address what services are available across residential treatment facilities in Ontario, who gets access to this limited resource, and how treatment for opioid use disorder received through residential and outpatient community settings impacts patient health outcomes. This research will be guided by a diverse group of people with lived experience, researchers, and clinicians with expertise in addiction medicine. Deaths from Canada's unregulated drug supply are preventable. As harms continue to rise, it is more important than ever to generate timely real-world evidence on the accessibility, effectiveness, and safety of evolving opioid treatment options.