The funding comes from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE), a national organization that funds efforts to end the nation’s opioid abuse crisis.

Bullinger, who focuses on the impact of public policy interventions in child and maternal health and well-being, will work with Angélica Meinhofer, an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, on a study that will examine how delivery of primary care, behavioral health, and preventive services within schools affects children experiencing adverse childhood experiences, including parental opioid use disorder.

“We are grateful to FORE for this support, which will enable us to better understand the benefit of strategies implemented in school health centers to help kids who have been exposed to opioid misuse,” Bullinger said.

Bullinger hopes to wrap up the work by May 2025.

The grant is part of $10.9 million in awards announced by the group on March 22. The awards focus on supporting family services agencies, medical centers, and universities as they work to find ways to protect children suffering from abuse, neglect, or other impacts from the adults in their lives abusing opioids.

“These three-year grants represent our commitment to learn what must be done with this evolving opioid poisoning crisis. The environment changes, resources wax and wane, government interest changes, and the people affected react differently over time. To be effective we have to monitor, learn, and change; only then can we hope to advance the most effective solutions and prevent opioid use,” said Dr. Andrea G. Barthwell, chair of FORE’s Board of Directors.

In 2019, Bullinger published research estimating that 548,000 children were living with an adult with opioid use disorder as of 2017, a 30% increase since 2002. She also authored a 2021 paper examining the impacts of adult opioid use on child well-being.

For more information about FORE and the awards, visit https://bit.ly/3L6u7AN.

The School of Public Policy is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.