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Dr. Kessler[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Lawrence M. Kessler, PhD Research Assistant Professor
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Dr. Harris[/caption]
Matthew C. Harris, PhD Assistant Professor
Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research and Department of Economics
The University of Tennessee
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Motivation for this study came from Co-Author, Matt Murray, who was at a speaking engagement and heard a community business leader say “we’ve got jobs, but no one is applying, could opioids be a contributing factor?” This led to a conversation back at the Boyd Center between us and Matt Murray, where we decided that if we could get data on prescription rates, we could answer this question empirically.
We started by contacting each state agency in charge of their respective prescription drug monitoring program to see if they’d be willing to share county-level data on prescription opioid rates. From this letter-writing campaign we received data from 10 states, which formed the basis for our analysis. As time went on, new data was made publicly available and we were able to expand the analysis to all 50 states.