Yi Yang
OXFORD, Miss. – Faculty members of the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmacy Administration have received a grant through the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institutes of Health.
Titled “Safety and Effectiveness of Opioid Tapering Among Older Adults,” the $432,303 grant will allow researchers to study older adults who are using long-term opioids to manage chronic pain.
Dr. Yi Yang, chair and professor of pharmacy administration, serves as the principal investigator. Joining her as co-investigators are fellow pharmacy administration faculty John Bentley, Sujith Ramachandran and Kaustuv Bhattacharya. Ike Eriator from the University of Mississippi Medical Center will also be a member of the team.
According to Yang, the grant will benefit pharmacy administration graduate students, as one graduate student will join the research team for the duration of the grant. The research team also plans to engage the school’s professional pharmacy students and the university’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College students through the grant.
“This project is expected to contribute tremendously to the education and research missions of our department and further enhance our reputation as a national leader in opioid safety and effectiveness research,” Yang said. “We also expect this grant to foster strong interests in pharmacoepidemiological and medication safety research among pharmacy students and undergraduate students at our university as they can use the data for their thesis, dissertation and non-thesis projects.”
This project is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 2R15DA046036-02.