Family and friends of those with opioid use disorder could soon have an intervention tool for them to help loved ones.

Wayne State University Assistant Professor Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences Erin Fanning Madden, Ph.D., M.P.H., is co-leading the “Developing and Evaluating the Concerned Caregivers Education for Resource Navigation (ConCERN) Intervention for Preventing Overdose” project, a new five-year study supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, to develop and test a mobile intervention for friends and family members of people with opioid use disorder. 

She is the co-principal investigator with University of Michigan researcher, Pooja Lagisetty, M.D. The study will use a clinical trial to test the mobile intervention with the friends/family of people who recently experienced an opioid overdose.

“We’re excited to receive the opportunity to work on this problem with our southeast Michigan community. Dr. Lagisetty and I, as experts in addiction research, have been approached many times by people who are struggling with a friend or family member’s substance use,” Dr. Madden said. “While we can always give advice and direct people to good resources, most people do not know an addiction expert like us. There is a big need for an accessible resource for people who want to help a loved one to address their drug use. With ConCERN, we hope to create a mobile app and text messaging service that will fill this gap.”

The leadership team first met when Dr. Madden attended Dr. Lagisetty’s virtual talk at the Drug Policy Alliance in 2020. Dr. Lagisetty now lends her clinical and health services expertise and Dr. Madden shares her community-engaged research and sociological skillset.

Dr. Madden’s team will host a series of workshops with community members who have an opioid addiction or are the friend/family of a person with an opioid addiction to develop the mobile intervention.

Friends and family members of people with addictions are greatly impacted by substance use but are often not included in interventions seeking to increase treatment and reduce substance use harms.

“The interventions that have been developed for friends and family largely require multi-session counseling interventions, such as group and family therapy. While this can be very helpful for some people, this approach is also time and resource intensive,” Dr. Madden said. “The brief mobile intervention should last a few minutes daily for two to four weeks, using an app and text messages to communicate to friends and family the best practices for handling addiction.”

The content will help friends and family reduce stigma, enhance health system navigation skills, build effective communication with people who might not be willing or able to enter treatment, and improve personal well-being by managing the emotional impacts of addiction.

To develop ConCERN, the researchers plan to partner with a technology company and a small group of community members who either have experienced opioid addiction or have had close friends or family members who have an opioid addiction. Through their feedback, they will create an app prototype and test it in a clinical trial over three years (2026-2028).

“We will work with southeast Michigan quick response teams, which are staffed by peers who help people after a drug overdose. Quick response teams will offer the ConCERN mobile intervention to the friends and family of people who recently overdosed,” Dr. Madden added.

The study team hopes to address the unmet need for brief and accessible resources for friends and families of people addicted to opioids, and to test whether the approach helps to improve social support, treatment outcomes and risky drug use behaviors.

“The friends and family of people who use drugs often care and want to help, but don't know how to do so effectively. They are an underleveraged resource that we hope to activate to improve outcomes for people with opioid addictions,” she said.

The project aligns with Dr. Madden’s other work on stigma toward people who use drugs, and research into how to reduce stigma and increase engagement in supportive services.

The number for this award is R01CE003668.