The public health impact of substance use (SU) is substantial, with tobacco use and excessive drinking leading as causes of death in the USA. To address this growing epidemic, governments have implemented a range of SU-related policies. The NIH’s Clinical & Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, which aims to accelerate translation of research findings into health impact, may advance translation through its impact on the policy literature that informs policymakers, health professionals, and the public. Using innovative bibliometric tools, this study evaluates how CTSA-supported research published from 2006-2023 has influenced SU-related policy literature.
The authors identified 135K publications that acknowledged CTSA support. Those publications were queried in the Overton Policy database, which indexes references to research publications in global policy literature.
Thus far, CTSA-supported publications have been cited in 3,451 policy documents identified as SU-related according to Overton’s Topics field. SU-related Topics were classified into top categories of: Tobacco, Opioids, Cannabis, Alcohol, and General/Other SU. Policy documents came from 321 organizations across 49 countries- often governments, health agencies, or political think tanks, including the World Health Organization, Guidelines in Pubmed Central, and the RAND Corporation. The authors present case illustrations of individual research publications that have had notable influence on SU policy.
By elucidating ways that supported publications are applied outside academia, bibliometrics offer a useful avenue for evaluating the translational impact of programs on specific areas of policy. Our findings showcase the impact that CTSA research has had on SU-related policy literature, a critical area of health policy.
Llewellyn, N. M., Weber, A., Kegley, S., Nehl, E. J., & Abraham, A. J. (2025). From Research Influencers to Substance Use Policymakers: Bibliometrics Demonstrate Translation from Research to Policy. Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs, jsad-25.
