Zachary Mannes
Columbia University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
As the US opioid crisis continues, two questions remain open about the patients most at risk. Does problem cannabis use make opioid harms more or less likely?
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
opioid crisis
opioid use disorder
cannabis use disorder
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- Test whether cannabis use disorder is a risk factor for later opioid use disorder, opioid-related hospitalization, and fatal or non-fatal overdose. Use a longitudinal cohort built from VHA electronic health records.
- Identify barriers to and facilitators of non-drug treatments for cannabis use disorder, and test whether receiving treatment is linked to lower risk of later opioid-related outcomes in VHA patients.
- Determine individual-level and state-level factors that modify the links between cannabis use disorder, its treatment and opioid-related health outcomes.
- Measure the health risks of tapering or stopping long-term opioid therapy since the 2016 CDC guidelines, including emergency visits, hospitalizations, and suicide or overdose deaths. Use Cox survival models with VHA data.
- Examine whether veterans who taper long-term opioid therapy receive non-drug pain treatments and what barriers block access. Test whether these treatments improve outcomes, using Andersen's model of health service use as a framework.
More about the research
And what happens to people with chronic pain when their long-term opioid prescriptions are reduced or stopped? This lab answers such questions with large-scale electronic health record (EHR) data from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), one of the largest US healthcare systems, covering millions of patients each year. Both projects ask whether non-drug treatments reduce opioid-related harms, and which barriers keep patients from getting those treatments.
Why it matters
These studies could give clinicians, healthcare administrators and policymakers evidence on whether cannabis use disorder raises opioid-related harms and whether its treatment lowers them. They could also show how to taper prescription opioids safely for people with chronic pain. The goal is to guide care for veterans and others at risk of overdose, hospitalization and suicide.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
The Impact of Cannabis Use Disorder and its Treatment on Opioid-related Health Consequences: A Longitudinal Study of VA Patients
NIH · Sep 2025 – May 2030
Barriers to and Health Consequences of Non- Pharmacological Chronic Pain Treatment among Patients Tapering Prescription Opioids in a Large Integrated Healthcare System
NIH · Sep 2023 – Aug 2028
Closest labs
Hefei Wen
Emory University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Estimate effects of the first year of Medicare Part D opioid safety edits, before the 2020 public health emergency, on non-elderly beneficiaries prescribed long-term, high-dose opioid therapy, using 2017-22 Medicare claims and quasi-experimental designs.
Anne Black
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure how time to a medically significant fall relates to current and cumulative methadone dose among VA patients who started methadone for opioid use disorder between 2016 and 2025.
Danielle Haley
Boston University, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine whether cannabis use disorder is associated with new falls, fractures, delirium and dementia, and with HIV viral suppression and antiretroviral therapy adherence, in about 180,000 Veterans Aging Cohort Study patients.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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