A review of implementation research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2007-2023:-2023: Progress and opportunities

Background: The ongoing and evolving overdose epidemic highlights the need to translate research results into routine clinical practice to address urgent service delivery needs. Implementation science is a relatively new discipline intended to develop systematic, replicable, scalable strategies to accelerate this translation. This article presents a comprehensive review of implementation research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Methods: The study identified all NIDA-funded research grants awarded in fiscal years 2007 through 2023 in treatment services or prevention research (n = 1111) and screened them to find those with a pre-specified implementation science component (n = 248). Using the text of the grant application, two reviewers independently coded the key characteristics of each study. Results: The characteristics of these grants, and trends over time, are described, and priority gap areas are identified. NIDA's implementation research grants have demonstrated increasing rigor in design and measurement. Conclusions: Growth in the portfolio has been driven in part by NIDA's investments in research-practice partnerships in the criminal-legal system, and by recent efforts to address the overdose epidemic.