Rhode Island Hospital announced Thursday it has been awarded an $11.8 million federal grant to establish a research center on opioids and overdose.
The Center of Biomedical Research Excellence on Opioids and Overdose will work in partnership with Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital to develop and support research aimed at better understanding the science of opioid addition to facilitate treatment and prevention.
Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich, an infectious disease specialist at The Miriam Hospital, will co-lead the center with Brown University epidemiologist, Traci Green. The two have received national recognition for their research into opioid addiction and treatment.
“The goal of the center,’’ Rich said, “is to bring basic scientists, bring geneticists, bring ethnographers, bring anthropologists, bring pharmacists, bring physicians…to really understand the science…and really drive the best research that can address this epidemic as quickly as possible.”
The $11.8 million grant is for the first five years of what could be a 15-year project funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health.
The research areas to be funded include prescribing opioids for pain after motor vehicle accidents and treating infants born to opioid-addicted mothers. Rhode Island Hospital also will provide another $600,000 for a pilot program.
