About the project
A new pilot providing heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) as part of the opioid agonist option in Norway offers great potential for establishing new knowledge about this treatment.
Background
This quality of life project has been initiated and organized by SERAF within the larger Heroin-assisted treatment evaluation study.
The subproject on quality of life (QoL) will be carried out from 2022 to 2025 with ongoing data collection. Patient recruitment to the study started concurrently in January 2022 with the first patients enrolling in HAT in two clinics in Oslo and Bergen respectively.
Data collection using questionnaires will also continue for the entire duration of the project as patients are followed at different points in time: 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and at 12 month increments thereafter.
Opioid use disorder (OUD) is understood to be a chronic condition with cycling disease intensity, often characterized by periods in and out of treatment. Therefore, treatment must be considered in its long-term entirety with a focus on developing relationships with patients to promote rapid access to treatment in the event of drop out.
Aims
As with management of most chronic conditions, the primary goals of treatment should be the maintenance of or improvement in QoL. Therefore, patients and clinicians need new tools to monitor the effects of ongoing treatment.
These tools should assess the effects of ongoing treatment by focusing on function and QoL to optimize and tailor treatment as well as to increase retention.
Objectives
The aim of the project is to describe whether and how QoL changes during HAT. We are interested in identifying any factors associated with better QoL scores and increased retention in HAT.
Factors concerning socio-economic characteristics, treatment-related aspects, and other external domains such as drug use, social relationships and criminal activity will be explored.
In addition, we would like to explore if these QoL changes and patterns can be identified in real-time through frequent measurement and how feasible the use of such indicators could be for the day-to-day tailoring of treatment.