Development of an Opioid Withdrawal Clinical Outcome Assessment

Withdrawal management strategies are currently the most utilized and ubiquitous intervention for opioid use disorder in the US, yet existing measures of opioid withdrawal lack Food and Drug Administration (FDA) qualification. This project will develop and validate a clinical outcome assessment (COA) for opioid withdrawal,essential for standardizing withdrawal mitigation strategies and establishing best practices. In line with the FDA's drug development tool qualification guidelines, our methodological process will involve conducting focus groups with persons with lived experience of opioid withdrawal for concept elicitation, refining these concepts through cognitive interviews, and conducting construct and longitudinal validations of the new assessment in laboratory settings and across diverse treatment contexts.