UNC-Chapel Hill collaborates with NC Department of Public Safety, Durham County Sheriff’s Office on opioid addiction treatment

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, the home of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute, will collaborate with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the Durham County Sheriff’s Office to implement and evaluate two new opioid addiction treatment programs for people in the criminal justice system. Both of these projects are part of a new initiative by the NIH that created a network to improve opioid addiction treatment in criminal justice settings.

UNC-Chapel Hill will collaborate with the NC Department of Public Safety to link people in community supervision in Brunswick County to medication-assisted treatment via peer support specialists.This project is funded under NIDA’s $10.8 million grant to Brown University.

Carolina will also collaborate with the Durham County Sheriff’s Office to link people in the Durham County Detention Center to substance use and primary care services via a community health worker with the Carolina-led Formerly Incarcerated Transition Program. This project is funded under a separate JCOIN grant to Yale University.