Computationally Efficient Estimation of Localized Treatment Effects for Multi-Level, Multi-Component Interventions to Address the Opioid Crisis
This provides a computationally efficient method for policymakers to evaluate resource-allocation strategies for mitigating the opioid epidemic in local communities, though it is incremental as it builds on existing simulation models and metamodeling techniques.
The authors tackled the problem of estimating localized treatment effects for multi-level, multi-component interventions in the opioid crisis, which requires computationally expensive simulations, and developed a bi-level metamodel framework with sequential sampling that achieved approximately 5% average relative error using one-tenth the number of runs needed for exhaustive simulation.
The opioid epidemic remains a major public health challenge in the United States, requiring a multi-pronged intervention approach to mitigate harms to communities. Given the heterogeneity of the epidemic across the country, it is crucial for policymakers to understand localized treatment effects of different intervention components and utilize limited resources efficiently. While locally calibrated simulation models offer a useful computational tool to project the epidemic outcomes for any given intervention policy, collecting simulation results for all intervention combinations to estimate localized treatment effects for each community is impractical because the number of possible intervention combinations grows exponentially with the number of interventions and levels at which they are applied. To tackle this, we develop a bi-level metamodel framework with a two-stage sequential design for efficient sampling. The metamodel consists of a response function linking health outcomes to each intervention component's treatment effect, and a Gaussian process regression to learn spatial and socio-economic structures of the treatment effects based on locally-contextualized covariates. With two-stage sequential sampling, we leverage spatial correlations and posterior uncertainty to sequentially sample the most informative counties and treatment conditions. We apply this framework to estimate treatment effects of buprenorphine dispensing and naloxone distribution on overdose mortality rates using a calibrated agent-based opioid epidemic model in PA counties. Our approach achieves approximately 5% average relative error using one-tenth the number of runs required for an exhaustive simulation. Our bi-level framework provides a computationally efficient approach to support policymakers, in evaluating resource-allocation strategies to mitigate the opioid epidemic in local communities.