From South Africa to Baltimore to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, psychology researcher Jessica Magidson has spent much of her career studying the problems faced by people with substance use disorders and finding ways to support their recovery.

Now, with over $2 million in funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the MPower Professor and Director of the Center for Substance Use, Addiction and Health Research (CESAR) is joining colleagues to give those in recovery a stronger voice in shaping substance use research.

Magidson and co-principal investigator Sarah Kattakuzhy, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), will focus on several counties in western Maryland and on the East Coast that have been particularly affected by the opioid epidemic and will recruit 15 rural Maryland residents to serve on a “patient advisory committee” to guide the grant’s research efforts.

“People with substance use disorders are often neglected in the research process, and this is even more true when they live in rural communities,” Magidson said. “This project will hopefully become a national model for advising other experts conducting research in this area.”

The researchers – including Erin Artigiani, deputy director for policy at CESAR, Eric Weintraub, associate professor of psychiatry, Marik Moen, associate professor of family and community health, and Jodi Frey, a professor in the School of Social Work at UMSOM at the University of Maryland in Baltimore – will work with committee members to identify what programs are currently available for individuals with substance use disorders and where they may be falling short.

Andrea López, Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, will provide her interview and observation skills to this part of the project.

“Mixed methods and interdisciplinary approaches strengthen our ability to understand complex social problems,” said López. “By bringing in methods from medical anthropology, we expand our commitment to understanding the structural, social and environmental factors that affect marginalized populations in their everyday lives.”

Firsthand insights from patients are incredibly valuable for substance use studies, researchers say, because the path to recovery is often not straightforward and patients’ drug histories can be complex.

“All of our research clearly underscores how many types of drugs people can be exposed to,” Artigiani explained. “What drugs they are exposed to – and whether they knew they were taking those types of drugs or were exposed to them unwittingly – can have a big impact on what kind of help they need, what kind of treatment might be most effective for them, and what kind of ongoing support they need in their recovery.”

CESAR has already gained insight into how this phenomenon of “polysubstance use” plays out in rural areas. Magidson and Kattakuzhy have been conducting a peer-based study using mobile treatment units in Caroline County for nearly two years, and Artigiani is a co-investigator on a project that collects anonymized data from electronic health records and tests patient urine samples for various substances.

“These rural communities are hit really, really hard by polysubstance use – it’s not just opioids, but opioids, methamphetamine, alcohol and other substances,” Magidson said. “We find that when people seek services for multiple substance use disorders, services are even more fragmented or poorly coordinated.”

The ultimate goals of the study are to find and test new methods to solve these problems, and here too the Patient Advisory Board will play an important role. While the researchers have ideas for pilot programs that are worthy of investigation, whether and how they carry them out will depend on those who know the subject best: the patients.

“The best drugs and treatments can be developed, but if people don’t use them, they won’t be effective,” Magidson said. “We need to talk to the people who are actually living with these conditions to find out what can help them actually use the services and maintain long-term recovery.”