Association of economic and racial segregation with restricted buprenorphine dispensing in U.S. community pharmacies.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Timely and reliable dispensing of buprenorphine is critical to accessing treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). Racial and ethnic inequities in OUD treatment access are well described, but it remains unclear if inequities persist at the point of dispensing.

Methods

We analyzed data from a U.S. telephone audit that measured restricted buprenorphine dispensing in community pharmacies, defined as inability to fill a buprenorphine prescription requested by a "secret shopper." Using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE), we constructed county-level measures of racial, ethnic, economic, and racialized economic (joint racial and economic segregation) segregation. Logistic regression models evaluated the association of ICE measures and restricted buprenorphin

SUBMITTER: Moon KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11301394 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature