Mobile Opioid Outreach and Treatment: A Randomized Experiment

Combating the overdose epidemic is a central challenge of US health care policy. The most effective treatment for opioid use disorder is medication assisted treatment (MAT), but barriers to access lead more than eighty percent of those in need of MAT not to utilize it. Providers are increasingly exploring the use of vans to provide mobile opioid outreach and MAT to communities where traditional brick-and-mortar provision is costly or otherwise challenging. However, there is no empirical evidence on the impacts of mobile opioid outreach and treatment (MOOT).

In light of this, Pierce County Human Services (PCHS) has committed to randomizing the locations of two funded MOOT vans scheduled to be deployed in 2026-27 (and hopefully beyond), serving approximately 300 opioid users per year. This proposal aims to develop an evaluation infrastructure around this randomization to measure the impact of the vans on treatment access and patient outcomes. Our primary research questions are: how does access to the vans impact (a) the likelihood of seeking treatment following referral and (b) the rate of opioid overdose in communities where vans are deployed?