D-ISN/Collaborative Research: Mitigating the Harm of Fentanyl through Holistic Demand/Supply Interventions and Equitable Resource Allocations

The objective of this Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply Networks (D-ISN) research project is to investigate advanced methods and tools to mitigate the harm caused by the distribution and use of illicit opioids in the U.S. The project seeks to reduce the harm caused by illicit opioids by developing methods to study interventions on both the supply-side (by studying the supply chain of opioids) and demand-side (by shifting user pathways towards recovery) and to provide effective resource allocation between these different approaches. The convergent research agenda, augmented with collaboration from multiple community organizations, from courts, law enforcement, to public health, will integrate methods from criminology, public health, and operations research. This research will help to improve our understanding of the operations of illicit opioid supply chains, especially how fentanyl and its analogs find their way into other drugs and how to prevent their flow to users. On the demand-side, the project will enhance understanding of the impact of harm reduction strategies through user pathways to addiction. Overall, the project aims to improve the equitable and optimal allocation of demand- and supply-side intervention resources to mitigate the harm caused by illegal opioid use. The project advances and integrates multidisciplinary methods from product design, production, distribution, graph/network theory, optimization, data science, machine learning, agent-based simulation, and fair allocation to reduce harm caused by fentanyl and illicit opioids. The project has three main thrusts. First, the project investigates supply-Side disruptions through understanding the intersections of fentanyl and other Illicit opioid products and distribution networks. This thrust employs a Bill-Of-Materials perspective on product adulteration, transfer learning between licit and/or Illicit supply chains to fill-in data gaps and understanding and modeling the distribution network with multi-commodity flow disruption models for harm reduction. Secondly, the project studies demand-side interventions for different fentanyl user groups. This thrust comprises an investigation of opioid users’ motivations and pathways to use illicit opioids/fentanyl through semi-structured interviews and surveys, fentanyl dispersion in communities, and agent-based models of drug use and harm reduction strategies. The third thrust develops resource allocation models to study the effects of interventions, law-enforcement, and medication-assisted treatments through simulation modeling. The project will make use of definitions of harm, equity, and fairness in distribution of interventions/resources across socioeconomic groups, and new holistic optimization, and simulation models to bring together demand-side and supply-side decisions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.