487. Expanding Naloxone Accessibility: A Lifesaver or a Risky Setback?
Invited abstract in session MC-13: Medical applications, stream OR in Healthcare (ORAHS).
Monday, 12:30-14:00Room: Clarendon SR 1.01
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Junyang Cai
|
| Technion | |
| 2. | Noa Zychlinski
|
| Data and Decision Sciences, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology |
Abstract
Governments have expanded naloxone access to reduce overdose deaths, but this raises concerns about moral hazard and opioid misuse. We develop a dynamic compartmental model to analyze the impact of naloxone accessibility on the opioid epidemic, capturing transitions between susceptible individuals and those with opioid use disorder (OUD).
Our optimization framework determines the optimal naloxone accessibility level, balancing overdose mortality reduction against potential increases in new OUD cases. We find that full naloxone access is optimal when either minimizing new OUD cases and naloxone effectiveness is lower than moral hazard or prioritizing overdose mortality reduction when naloxone effectiveness exceeds moral hazard. In other cases, restricting naloxone access is optimal.
When moral hazard is significant, expanding access may unintentionally increase overdose mortality despite reducing new OUD cases. This reversal highlights the critical role of moral hazard in shaping optimal policies.
We extend our model to incorporate social interactions, revealing consistent solution properties, including a bang-bang structure and moral hazard's reversal effect on the optimal policy. Policymakers must carefully balance accessibility and risk to mitigate unintended consequences.
Keywords
- Health Care
- Decision Analysis
- OR/MS and the Public Sector
Status: accepted
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