The National Institutes of Health is expected to see an overall 40% cut in funding in the current national budget. That's according to analysts at the Brookings Institute. Even more cuts are on the way for the newly formed National Institute on Behavioral Health. This means funding for programs studying the different aspects of addiction and recovery could be slashed.
Tori Votaw went to high school and college in Kentucky before getting a job with Harvard Medical School. She is researching ways to personalize addiction treatment. In an interview with WEKU's Eastern Standard, she explained some of her work.
“Studying how we can predict early, within the first week or two of treatment, who is likely to struggle with buprenorphine treatment., who is likely to, ultimately relapse and leave treatment, so we can identify those people while they're still engaged, and we can offer them extra support or even transition them to a different kind of treatment that would be better for them.”
Votaw said NIH funding made much of her education possible, funding three different NIH labs that focused on substance use.
“I was actually really fortunate to work in three NIH-funded labs that focused on substance use. For example, one of these labs that I worked in tested medications for opioid addictions, but this lab also studied what we call the abuse liability of prescription opioids.”
Hear more with Tori Votaw later this week on Eastern Standard on WEKU.
