Podcast from Washington: The FRED Overdose Simulator Tool

In this week’s episode of Podcast from Washington, NACCHO government affairs team members Ian Goldstein and Eli Briggs discuss President Biden’s first address to Congress. They also discuss the FDA decision to prohibit the sale of menthol flavors in tobacco products, and the Biden Administration’s latest guidelines for medication-assisted treatment.

Later in the program, Ian speaks with Dr. Nisha Nataraj, a statistician on the  Applied Research, Evaluation, and Integration team in the Division of Overdose Prevention at the CDC, and Dr. Mark Roberts, professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh. They discuss their collaborative effort to build the Framework for Reconstructing Epidemiologic Dynamics (FRED) simulator for opioid use disorder and overdose, and how local health departments can use the FRED tool to simulate the disease progression of prescription and illicit opioid use disorder.