Rethinking the Opioid Crisis: Using Seven Pay for Success Principles to Better Understand and Address the Crisis

This Urban Institute report notes that the opioid crisis is widely recognized as a difficult policy challenge, but the reasons why it is difficult and the paths to overcoming those difficulties are less easily understood. As a result, policymakers risk spending limited public resources on potentially ineffective or even counterproductive efforts. Adopting the perspective of pay for success (PFS)-–an outcomes-oriented funding model-–helps to mitigate these risks and facilitates the application of sound public policy and administration principles.