Researchers worked with racial minorities with opioid use disorder (OUD) to document how this doubly-vulnerable group were impacted by COVID
There have been plenty of studies examining how racial minorities are being disproportionately impacted by the pandemic – with rates of hospitalisation and death that are too high in comparison to the white community. Harvard researchers recently revealed that Black women in the US are four times likelier to die than white men, which is a shocking statistic.
Racial minorities with comorbidities like diabetes and obesity are particularly susceptible to the virus. But what about minorities with other issues that combine mental and physical health, such as addiction?
The study examines direct and indirect impacts
Assistant professor Roman Shrestha said: “As the pandemic unfolded, experts started raising concerns about both the direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on people with OUD.”
Doctoral candidate Colleen Mistler, professor Michael Copenhaver, and assistant professor Roman Shrestha, from the Department of Allied Health Sciences, collaborated with colleagues at Yale University and Drexel University, as well as the UConn Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention and Policy (InCHIP) worked on this from May to June 2020.
The team examined 110 patients who are currently taking methadone for their opioid addiction, looking at their substance use, sexual behaviour, mental health, economic impacts of the pandemic, and experience with COVID-19 and preventative measures.
Racial minorities more likely to know someone who died of COVID
The team observed that people of colour were more likely to know someone who died from the virus, with a resultant increase of concern about COVID in comparison to their white counterparts.
The minority group also found it harder to access COVID tests.
A general increase in depression, anxiety and frustration was also observed across all groups. The loneliness effect, in which lockdown measures cut people off from their friends and family, was thought to be responsible. In a different study, researchers examined how loneliness could be reshaping structures in the human brain.
Participants did not change their sexual habits – such as number of partners or how often they have unprotected sex, which connects to the fears of both COVID and infections like HIV. Right now, structural racism, opioid addiction and HIV are highly connected in some parts of the US – creating a shadow pandemic, which experts suggest will not be resolved without tackling medical racism and poverty in certain regions.
The positive observations
The research team noticed that racial minorities reported “greater reductions in substance use behavior” during the pandemic than white participants.
Before the study begun, there was a general worry about access to opioid treatment. Across the US, healthcare access has become obscure with COVID hospitalisations and deaths dominating the priorities of professionals – but luckily, these participants were still on their methadone treatment. The clinics in the New Haven area established services such as telehealth, mobile-clinics, take-home bottles of methadone.
They remained open at a safely limited capacity.
Assistant professor Roman Shrestha further commented: “The continued availability of these services, although in a limited capacity, were really helpful, and may be the reason why we’re not seeing a significant difference in the use of addiction treatment and HIV prevention services.”
