Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the field of public administration, social justice involves using deference to encourage equity and equality. Health inequities present a social justice problem in public administration. While there is robust evidence that race affects health care, it is not clear how and whether race affects opioid addiction treatment. Given the ubiquity of opioid addiction in the United States, studying this question is imperative to ensure that substance abuse treatment public policy is treating individuals of all races. Based on fundamental cause theory and systematic racism theory, I hypothesized that race affects opioid addiction treatment in three ways: the referral source for treatment, whether the patient received medication-assisted treatment, and the reason for discharge. Using data from the 2011 Treatment Episode Data Set Discharges (TEDS-D), a national survey of all treatment centers which receive public funds, I ran logistical and multinomial regression models, which revealed that all three models were statistically significant. While racial differences were observed in opioid addiction treatment, some of the results were unexpected and inconsistent with the literature, meaning further research it likely needed. It may be beneficial to provide policy interventions for opioid addiction which recognize the systematic racism that exist, rather than our current colorblind policies, as suggested by the critical race theory. However, before enacting such policies, it is necessary to conduct further research on whether this trend persists in other years and why some results are inconsistent with the literature.