Thread by @StefanKertesz

1/Recruiting people who lose someone to suicide after Rx opioids are stopped, is hard but feasible.
That a beginning.

That’s pilot work for CSI:OPIOIDs -
Presented at #SGIM22
So thankful to:
⁦@AllysonVarley⁩ ⁦@PainPtFightBack⁩ ⁦@AJ_Gordon⁩

A word more-

2/Our view is that statistical studies of Rx opioid stoppage are sufficient to show there is risk of suicide but they don’t explain what happened.

When a plane crashes- we look closely at why.

Suicide deaths occurring after Rx reductions deserve no less.

3/But how does one recruit nationally?

How do you do that ethically? How would families decide whether to trust
“Researchers”
from a “Health System”
..when they *just lost someone they love because the healthcare system changed pain meds? @DrewQJoseph

statnews.com/2021/11/22/her…

4/Our work was designed to figure out what we could do, by ourselves without big social media advertising, with pilot support from @uabmedicine in preparation for a larger funded proposal with a real budget and staff ..
And we got about 55 real folks

5/We heard from 26 states, but not always from immediate family. Next step is that we are putting a full & detailed plan through the Central Institutional Review Board (ethics & privacy are their purview) for our prospective funder, Research & Development (Veterans Affairs)

6/We need to show a plan for a much bigger recruitment effort - that includes patients as partners, organizational partners to advice, a full-fledged public national recruitment that goes beyond 3 Twitter accounts- we are submitting that now.

7/As always I must say that research has been driven by our ethical commitment, and

advocacy had to begin BEFORE research

because actual lives were being lost in the name of “improving safety” based on wrong extrapolations from data

and that meant we could *not wait*

8/But now while I continue to advocate with and learn from others like @national_pain @LelenaPeacock @funchefchick @PainPtFightBack @tal7291 @nabarund - we are going to learn about, expose exactly what is happening in the people and in the processes of care - work continues. /fin