Engineering Approaches for Addressing Opioid Use Disorder in the Community

Many communities in the United States are struggling to deal with the negative consequences of illicit opioid use. Effectively addressing this epidemic requires the coordination and support of community stakeholders in a change process with common goals and objectives, continuous engagement with individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) through their treatment and recovery journeys, application of systems engineering principles to drive process change and sustain it, and use of a formal evaluation process to support a learning community that continuously adapts. This review presents strategies to improve OUD treatment and recovery with a focus on engineering approaches grounded in systems thinking.