Francis S. Collins, Ph.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Nora Volkow, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), discussed the latest developments of the Helping to End Addiction Long-termSM Initiative, or NIH HEAL InitiativeSM at a virtual plenary session at this year’s Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit.
They discuss the impact of COVID-19 on Substance Use Disorders (SUD) research.
$900 million had been deployed for research on SUD. But due to COVID, the clinical trials had to stop because of the refocus to COVID solutions and the difficulty to safely recruit patients for the trials. Clinical trials across the board have been halted for any therapies other than those for life-threatening drugs.
