Drug treatment among US women increases with access to social safety net programs

Study finds Medicaid and complementary services like childcare and employment support linked to higher treatment rates

Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

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June 17, 2025 — Women with drug use disorder (DUD) and opioid use disorder (OUD) are more likely to receive treatment when enrolled in Medicaid alongside other government assistance programs such as childcare, employment services, and SNAP benefits. According to new research from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, these combined social safety net supports are significantly associated with increased receipt of drug treatment and medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD).

Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study sheds light on how overlapping safety net services can help address longstanding treatment gaps among women with substance use disorders—a topic that has remained underexplored until now.

“Medicaid, in particular, continues to play a critical role in facilitating access to drug treatment among women,” said Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, professor of Epidemiology and senior author. “But our findings also highlight how complementary services—such as childcare and employment support—can reduce structural barriers to care like lack of insurance, caregiving responsibilities, and financial instability.”

Key findings include:

• Among women with past-year OUD, those receiving both Medicaid and other forms of government assistance were significantly more likely to report MOUD receipt compared to those receiving neither.
• Fewer than 1 in 6 women with DUD reported receiving any past-year drug treatment.

Researchers analyzed data from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), using responses collected from 2,784 women aged 18–64 who met criteria for past-year DSM-5 DUD and 458 women who met criteria for OUD. The analysis, completed in 2024, estimated the odds of treatment receipt based on whether participants had Medicaid, government assistance, or both. Additional stratification included number and type of assistance programs received.

The analysis controlled for sociodemographic factors including age, race/ethnicity, education level, employment status, marital status, and number of children. Although this was not specifically studied in the current paper, fewer than 1 in 5 or 14% of women with OUD received MOUD compared to 23% of men, revealing a persistent gender gap in treatment access.

The study found that even in the absence of Medicaid, receipt of any government assistance was linked to significantly higher odds of treatment. “While drug treatment rates are improving among women who receive benefits, a substantial unmet need remains,” Martins noted.

The researchers emphasized the importance of policies that integrate treatment referrals with access to essential support services. “Our findings suggest that targeted interventions that include direct treatment linked to support services like housing, transportation, vocational training, and childcare and that go beyond health insurance alone could significantly increase treatment uptake and overcome structural barriers that disproportionately affect women —a possibility that should be directly tested in future research.”

Co-authors are Sam D. Gardner (first author), Columbia Mailman School and Columbia Social Work; Shota Hasui, Emilie Bruzelius, Megan E. Marziali, Nicole Fitzgerald, and Pia M. Mauro, Columbia Mailman School; Sarah Gutkind, Columbia Mailman School and Weill Cornell Medicine; and Morgan M. Philbin, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

The study was supported by NIH-NIDA grants R01DA059376, T32DA031099, R36DA061635, K01DA045224 and R01DA055606 and by the NIH HEAL Initiative.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the third largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu.

 

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Journal

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.amepre.2025.107948 

Article Title

Social safety net programs: the relationship with drug treatment among women

 

Virus transmission between bee species does not lead to new variants

University of Minnesota

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image: 

Bombus griseocollis, a bee species that was part of the study. 

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Credit: Ancilla Schroeder

A new study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota found transmission of viruses between different bee species did not lead to the formation of new virus variants. 

Results of the study, published in Communications Biology, may be a rare bit of good news for bee pollinators, which have been in decline for over 25 years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Led by researchers in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, the study focused on three viruses: deformed wing virus, black queen cell virus and sacbrood virus. These are three known pathogens of the non-native Western honey bee, the most commonly kept by beekeepers and the most widespread bee species in the world. 

Funding was provided by the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.

The researchers performed genomic sequencing on samples over three years to track the Western honey bee viral landscapes and whether the viruses could infect and adapt to common native bumblebees.

They found:

• While the honeybee viruses were present in the bumblebees, they were over 98% genetically identical and did not accumulate mutations that were specific to bumblebees.
• No bumblebee-specific variants of honeybee viruses could be detected, signaling that the viruses had not established themselves within the bumblebee populations. This suggests that the bumblebee was a dead-end host and bumblebee to bumblebee transmission was not taking place.
• The bumblebee had their own distinctive virome suggesting that these viruses were of more concern than those originating from honeybees.

Bee pollinator populations that are crucial to ecosystems and food production globally are under strain because of habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, invasive species, and pathogen-related diseases. One potential disease threat comes from the phenomenon for viral spillover to native pollinator species.

“While a concern, viral spillover from managed honeybees to wild bumblebees has of yet not resulted in the pandemic-type effects as first proposed,” said lead PI and corresponding author Declan Schroeder, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine. “Viral spillover does not appear to be a reason to limit or restrict the placement of honeybee colonies in areas occupied by wild bumblebees or bees of other species.”

Protection of bumblebees of conservation concern from potential pathogen spillover from honeybees is still a valid conservation action, particularly when protecting species at risk of extinction. Low genetic diversity, which has been demonstrated in bumblebee species of conservation concern, could increase vulnerability to pathogen spillover.

“We will continue to monitor the true viral diversity found both in managed honeybees and wild bee pollinators. Having a clear understanding of the bee viral baseline will allow us to act if new or reintroductions occur," said Schroeder.

“While it is reassuring to see a lack of virus replication in this study system, there are still several reasons to minimize exposure of native bee populations to managed honeybees. While this study found that there were no new virus variants formed in bumblebee hosts, that does not mean that the spillover of honeybee viruses to other bees is without risk. I hope that this study can lead to more monitoring to understand the impacts of the viruses on the health of bumblebees and other wild bees,” said co-author ​​Elaine Evans, an Extension professor and researcher in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

The UMN Bee Squad Program received private donations from individuals and the Minnesota Saint Paul Airport to support beekeeping activities.

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About the College of Veterinary Medicine
The University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine is a global leader in advancing education, health, and research at the interface of animals, people, and the environment. The college is also home to the Veterinary Medical Center, the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and The Raptor Center. Learn more at vetmed.umn.edu.

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Journal

Communications Biology

DOI

10.1038/s42003-025-08351-x 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Distinct virome compositions and lack of viral diversification indicate that viral spillover is a dead-end between the western honey bee and the common eastern bumblebee

Article Publication Date

16-Jun-2025

Where the wild bees thrive

Research highlights potential of combining agricultural and environmental measures for species protection

University of Göttingen

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Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) on flowering meadow knapweed

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Credit: Lisa Prudnikow

The global decline of wild bee populations is alarming. Landscapes characterised by intensive agriculture offer hardly any suitable habitats. Isolated local efforts are often not enough to counteract this loss. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Halle show that combining certain agricultural and environmental measures at the landscape level can offer more protection for wild bees. Their findings show that organic farming combined with multi-year natural habitats – such as meadows planted with long-lasting, perennial plants – is particularly effective. These two types of habitats together support significantly more wild bees than either does on its own. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

 

The researchers analysed the impact of three large-scale environmental measures in 32 agricultural landscapes: the creation of organic farmland; areas planted with flowers that bloom annually; and near-natural habitats using plants that return year after year. This enabled them to determine how different habitat combinations influenced wild bee abundance and species diversity.

 

They found that not every habitat combination is equally successful. The results show that many wild bees benefit most from a combination of organic farming and perennial, near-natural habitats. This is particularly true for wild bee species other than bumblebees. The reason: the areas complement each other by providing different food sources and nesting sites over longer periods of time. Bumblebees, on the other hand, benefit from both organic farming areas and near-natural habitats, regardless of whether the two occur together in the landscape or not. A less successful combination, however, is organic farmland paired with areas filled with plants that flower annually. These habitats offer similar flowers as a food source at the same time, but no additional variety – meaning the positives do not increase the total benefits to bees.

 

“Our findings show that a well-designed mix of habitat types is key. When areas complement each other in terms of food and nesting resources, they can support a wider range of wild bee species,” explains Kathrin Czechofsky, PhD researcher in Functional Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology at the University of Göttingen. Dr Annika Hass, a lead researcher from the ComBee project, adds: “This study offers important guidance for shaping future measures for agriculture and the environment. It highlights the value of coordinated, landscape-scale planning.”

 

The research is part of the ComBee project, a collaboration between the Universities of Göttingen and Halle. More information about the project can be found here: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/646422.html. The project was funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

 

Original publication: Kathrin Czechofsky, Catrin Westphal, Robert Paxton, Annika Hass, Landscape-level synergistic and antagonistic effects among conservation measures drive wild bee densities and species richness. Journal of Applied Ecology (2025). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.70074

Organic farmland full of poppies and cornflowers

Credit

Kathrin Czechofsky

Journal

Journal of Applied Ecology

DOI

10.1111/1365-2664.70074 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Landscape-level synergistic and antagonistic effects among conservation measures drive wild bee densities and species richness

Article Publication Date

15-Jun-2025

 

Just one adverse childhood event can nearly double health-related school absences

New study finds children with adverse childhood experiences are more likely to miss school due to illness or injury

University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences

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A new study led by researchers at UCLA Health finds that children who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are significantly more likely to miss school due to health-related issues. Using national survey data, researchers found that even one ACE increased the odds of chronic absenteeism due to illness, injury, or disability by nearly 2.5 times—raising concerns about how early adversity impacts both health and education. 

Why it matters 

School absenteeism has sharply increased since the COVID-19 pandemic and is a key predictor of poor educational, health, and economic outcomes later in life. This study highlights how early life trauma—such as exposure to violence, neglect, or racism—can disrupt school attendance not just through behavioral or family factors, but directly through worsened health. Recognizing and addressing the health impacts of childhood adversity could be key to improving school attendance and long-term outcomes. 

What the study did 

The research team analyzed data from the 2021–2022 National Health Interview Survey, a large, nationally representative dataset. Parents of over 10,000 children ages 6 to 17 reported on seven categories of ACEs, their child’s health status, and the number of school days missed due to illness, injury, or disability in the past year. Researchers used weighted logistic regression to estimate the relationship between ACEs and absenteeism, adjusting for sociodemographic factors. They also conducted a mediation analysis to test whether poor general health status helped explain this link. 

What they found 

Roughly 1 in 4 children had experienced at least one ACE. Those children were 1.5 times more likely to miss any school due to health reasons and 2.4 times more likely to be chronically absent for health reasons. There was a dose-response relationship: each additional ACE increased the odds of health-related chronic absenteeism by 25%. General health status accounted for part—but not all—of this relationship, suggesting that both physical and social stressors play a role in keeping children out of school. Among individual ACEs, witnessing violence and experiencing racial discrimination were most strongly tied to chronic absenteeism. 

What’s next 

The findings suggest pediatricians and educators should work together to identify students with ACE exposure and intervene early—especially when health-related absences emerge. Health systems might integrate ACE screening with school-based interventions to reduce absenteeism and improve child well-being. Researchers also call for future studies using school attendance records and more detailed health data to better understand causal mechanisms. 

From the experts 

“This study reinforces what pediatricians have long known: that kids exposed to adversity often show up in the clinic and the classroom with complex challenges,” said Dr. Rebecca Tsevat, lead author and a pediatrician and general internist at UCLA Health. “We need new models of collaboration between schools and healthcare systems to support these students before they miss too much school and experience worse health and educational outcomes as a result.” 

About the study 

The Association between ACEs and Health-Related School Absenteeism: Results from a National Survey of Youth. Published June 2025 in Academic Pediatrics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2025.102864. Online ahead of print. 

About the Research Team 

Drs. Rebecca K. Tsevat, Margaret M. Nkansah, Nicholas J. Jackson, Shannon M. Thyne, Bahareh Gordon, and Rebecca N. Dudovitz from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Dr. Kristen Choi from UCLA School of Nursing and Fielding School of Public Health; and Dr. Michelle Shankar from the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. 

Funding and Disclosures 

This study was funded by the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA and the UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network (UCAAN). The authors report no conflicts of interest. 

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Journal

Academic Pediatrics

DOI

10.1016/j.acap.2025.102864 

Article Title

The Association between ACEs and Health-Related School Absenteeism: Results from a National Survey of Youth

Article Publication Date

7-Jun-2025

SPAGYRIC HERBALISM

Stanford scientists reveal missing yew tree enzymes needed to make a common cancer drug

Stanford University

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Taxol is a widely used chemotherapy drug – it has been used to treat millions of ovarian, breast, and lung cancer patients. Today, it’s mainly produced by extracting its chemical precursor, baccatin III, from yew trees. But, yew trees grow slowly, so the amount of medicine produced per tree pales in comparison to its demand.

Taxol is large and complex, making it expensive to manufacture synthetically. That’s why scientists since the 1990s have sought to identify the enzymes trees employ to make Taxol, which can then be inserted into organisms such as industrious yeasts that can churn out the drug. 

“We really need enzymes to build this molecule,” said Conor McClune, a postdoctoral scholar in chemical engineering. “Enzymes are often the most efficient and cleanest way of doing a chemical reaction.”

Now, McClune and colleagues have unlocked a new means of peering at plant genes. The effort revealed several key enzymes for creating Taxol, also known as paclitaxel. The findings bring researchers much closer to the goal of producing the drug efficiently using industrial microbes, the team reported in the journal Nature on June 11. “Taxol has been the holy grail of biosynthesis in the plant natural products world,” said the study’s senior author, Elizabeth Sattely, an associate professor of chemical engineering. “Being able to use a bioproduction strategy to manufacture a molecule like Taxol is a really exciting prospect.”

Mysterious tree chemistry

Scientists have strained to peek into the yew’s laboratory. Compared to a bacterium like E. coli – whose chromosome carries about 4,000 genes – the yew tree genome is massive, about 50,000 genes. Narrowing down which is responsible for making Taxol has proven difficult. Prior to the study, 12 genes had been identified, but the goal of producing Taxol or baccatin III was still out of reach. 

To speed up the search, the Stanford team developed a method of filtering the thousands of enzymes for just those needed to make the medicine, inspired by the work of co-author Polly Fordyce, an associate professor of bioengineering and of genetics. They snipped needles off of yew trees and plopped them into plates with wells of water and fertilizer. Then, they intentionally stressed out their samples, adding hormones and microbes that induced the needles to produce defensive compounds – including Taxol.

The researchers ground up the needles and pulled out about 10,000 nuclei from their cells. They sequenced the nuclei and counted their messenger RNA. This allowed the scientists to see which genes were switched on from the stressors – the more RNA, the more of a particular gene is being transcribed and made into proteins. 

In this way, the team could see which genes flickered on together, indicating they might be partnering to produce proteins. Starting with the 12 genes already identified in Taxol production, the scientists searched for genes that this initial bunch might work with. They made lists of promising genes, and then inserted those candidates into tobacco plants to see if they furthered the chemical reaction that outputs Taxol.

Inserting enzyme recipes into industrial microbes

The experiment yielded eight new genes critical for making the drug. One, called FoTO1, plays an especially important role in streamlining and channeling the reaction. The newly identified enzymes were the missing puzzle pieces needed to produce baccatin III. In fact, the tobacco plants produced baccatin III at a concentration higher than found in yew trees. “Theoretically, with a little more tinkering, we could really make a lot of this and no longer need the yew at all to get baccatin,” said McClune, who is a co-lead author of the paper.

The team also identified an enzyme catalyzing one of the chemical steps between baccatin and Taxol, which helped push the pathway even further beyond baccatin – leaving only two final steps missing to Taxol. Coincidentally, in April, scientists at the University of Copenhagen identified those two final enzyme puzzle pieces that move the reaction from baccatin III to Taxol. Put together, the 22 genes now uncovered may represent the yew’s chemical recipe. “We now have the full set of genes that would allow us to synthesize Taxol from scratch,” said McClune.

In the near future, the researchers plan to verify in tobacco plants whether these final two enzymes work with the other 20 genes to complete Taxol synthesis. If the recipe is indeed complete, the genes encoding these enzymes can be inserted into a microbe. Strains of yeast could be engineered into “extremely efficient chemical factories” producing the drug at commercial scale, said McClune.

More broadly, this new method for testing thousands of cell nuclei may enable further discoveries in plant chemistry. Yew trees are not the only enigmatic plant chemists. McClune and colleagues are now studying the genomes of common crops. These vegetables are “full of enzymes that are doing interesting chemistry,” said McClune, “but we just don’t know what they’re up to.”

Sattely is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, a member of Stanford Bio-X, and a faculty fellow at Sarafan ChEM-H. Fordyce is also a member of Stanford Bio-X, a member of SPARK at Stanford, and an institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H. PhD student Jack Chun-Ting Liu is a co-lead author of the article; other Stanford co-authors include PhD student Chloe Wick and former PhD student Ricardo De La Peña (now at biotech startup Amyris). Bernd Markus Lange, associate professor at Washington State University, is also a co-author.

The research received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09090-z 

Article Title

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III

Article Publication Date

17-Jun-2025

THE YEW TREE

 

History of Humanities celebrates a decade of publishing

University of Chicago Press Journals

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History of Humanities (HOH) is publishing its tenth volume in 2025, marking a milestone for the publication as well as the relatively young field of study that has grown up alongside it. Founded in 2015 by editors Rens Bod, Julia Kursell, Jaap Maat, and Thijs Weststeijn, the journal was launched as a new forum for research on the history of humanistic knowledge—the first publication of its kind, and one that sought to establish the study of the history of the humanities as its own robust field to stand proudly alongside longstanding disciplines such as the history of science. HOH is published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Society for the History of the Humanities.

In its decade of existence, HOH has published articles spanning across time periods and regions. This scholarship has explored a vast array of topics, including the emergence of comparative musicology, the history of libraries, the history of the “inhumanities,” and the problem of scholarly forgetting. The journal’s contributors hail from six continents and span a wide range of disciplines, from art history to archaeology.

In their introduction to the anniversary issue, the editors of HOH reflect on the disciplinary growth that they have witnessed over the last decade. Research on the history of humanistic inquiry has blossomed from a niche field into an increasingly formalized discipline with dedicated courses and faculty at universities across the world. While the field may still be relatively small, HOH has been instrumental in its expansion. The editors write: “We are proud to have built a community of more than 1,000 researchers who have contributed to our journal or presented at our conferences. Each scholar who has engaged with us—whether through presenting research, publishing in the journal, or reviewing work—has played a role in shaping the field.”

Looking forward to the journal’s next chapter, the editors of HOH point to the urgency of the history of the humanities in our present moment, suggesting that humanistic values can serve to unite and inspire in times of uncertainty: “We firmly believe that the humanities play an indispensable role in addressing humanity’s challenges, from expanding artificial intelligence and climate migration to autocratic intellectual clampdown. Understanding their past will prepare us better for our future.”

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Journal

History of Humanities