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CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids: clinician rollout (2016 and 2022)

Also: CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (2016) · CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain (2022) · Reduce Overdose. Prescribe Responsibly.

“Reduce Overdose. Prescribe Responsibly.”

CDC published a voluntary guideline for primary care clinicians prescribing opioids for chronic pain in March 2016 and replaced it with a broader clinical practice guideline in November 2022. Each release came with clinician-facing materials: a mobile app with a morphine-equivalent calculator, fact sheets and checklists, clinician and patient posters, interactive training modules and COCA webinars for continuing education.

Years
2016–now
Country
United States
Budget
USD 929,316 contract 'Prescription Drug Overdose (PDO) Guidelines Translation', 2015-2017, to Brunet-Garcia Advertising (USAspending); USD 3,271,421 task order 'Drug overdose prevention for clinician education', 2022-2024, to ICF Macro (USAspending)
Topic
Opioids
Asks people to
StartStop
Strategy
Self efficacySimple instruction
Channel
AppClinical settingEventsPrintWebsite
Audience
Clinicians
Primary care clinicians prescribing opioids for pain in outpatient settings (2016); in 2022 widened to all outpatient clinicians treating acute, subacute and chronic pain. Patients are a secondary audience through posters and fact sheets.

Evidence

ObservationalMixed

Interrupted time series of US retail pharmacy data, 2012-2017 (Bohnert 2018): prescribing was already falling, but the decline steepened after March 2016 - high-dosage prescriptions (90+ MME/day) fell 8.00 per 100,000 per month after vs 3.56 before; overall prescribing 56.74 vs 23.48 per 100,000 per month. No control group. Commercial claims 2011-2018 (Goldstick 2022): nonopioid pain medication prescribing ran 3.0%, 8.7% and 9.7% above the pre-guideline trend in the three years after. Harm signal: CDC itself acknowledged in 2022 that states, insurers and pharmacies had misapplied the 2016 dosage thresholds as hard limits, with forced tapers and abandoned patients; the 2022 guideline was written partly to correct that.

Sponsor (who paid)

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control) Federal government, funder and creator

Credits (who made it)

Executions (individual ads)

Related campaigns

Sources

  1. Dowell D, Haegerich TM, Chou R. CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain - United States, 2016. MMWR Recomm Rep 65(1) sponsor · 2016 · DOI 10.15585/mmwr.rr6501e1
  2. Dowell D, Ragan KR, Jones CM, Baldwin GT, Chou R. CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain - United States, 2022. MMWR Recomm Rep 71(3) sponsor · 2022 · DOI 10.15585/mmwr.rr7103a1
  3. CDC issues resources to help clinicians apply opioid prescribing guidelines (AHA News, 16 Dec 2016) news · 2016
  4. Posters for Patients and Providers (CDC, archived) archive
  5. Bohnert ASB, Guy GP, Losby JL. Opioid Prescribing in the United States Before and After the CDC 2016 Opioid Guideline. Ann Intern Med 169(6):367-375 evaluation · 2018 · DOI 10.7326/M18-1243 · PMID 30167651
  6. Goldstick JE et al. Patterns in Nonopioid Pain Medication Prescribing After the Release of the 2016 Guideline. JAMA Netw Open 5(6):e2216475 evaluation · 2022 · DOI 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.16475 · PMID 35687334
  7. CDC Proposes Updating Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids, Warning Against Continued Misapplication (FDA Law Blog, 18 Mar 2022) news · 2022
  8. CDC: 2022 CDC Clinical Practice Guideline at a Glance sponsor

Research notes

Clinician-facing campaign. Discovered 2026-10-22 for #17 (clinician-campaigns pass). A guideline is not a media campaign, but CDC packaged both releases with a branded clinician toolkit (posters, app, fact sheets, COCA webinars, interactive training), so it belongs here as the anchor for prescriber campaigns. Corrected 2026-10-22: the 2016 toolkit does have a maker. A 2017 NPHIC conference abstract by Brunet-García and CDC (opened via Wayback) says Brunet-García 'was awarded a contract to develop a suite of materials to be released with CDC's Guideline' (fact sheets, digital ads, two videos, a presentation and the mobile app with the MME calculator); the matching CDC contract is HHSD200201588120C, 'Prescription Drug Overdose (PDO) Guidelines Translation', 30 Sep 2015-29 Sep 2017, USD 929,316 (https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_HHSD200201588120C_7523_-NONE-_-NONE-). For the 2022 guideline, CDC task order 75D30122F14010 to ICF Macro, 'Drug overdose prevention for clinician education', 30 Sep 2022-29 Sep 2024, USD 3.27M, is credited as strategy (the record names clinician education, not the guideline itself). The YouTube execution is a CDC-channel video (title prefix PMGR) posted about 2024; year not confirmed. cdc.gov returned 403 to scripted fetches, so the MMWR documents are cited by DOI only. App: AHA says it launched in December 2016; CDC Stacks lists it as no longer supported. Open question: whether CDC paid for media placement for the 2016 rollout (none found). Procurement search 2026-10-22 (USAspending API). Other CDC awards around the guideline, not credited: Abt Associates 'Opioid prescr guidelines' (Mar-Aug 2015, USD 246,765) and 'CDC OP guidelines' (2017-2019, USD 674,650), guideline development and implementation support; ICF Macro 'Provider opioid education and training', 2018-2020, USD 3.19M (possible vendor for CDC's 2018 interactive training series on applying the guideline); American Institutes for Research 'Evaluation of PDO guidelines', 2016-2018, USD 178,236; General Dynamics IT 'Evaluation of opioid guideline uptake', 2023-2025, USD 1.71M. All logged in scratchpad procurement-awards.tsv. Current CDC page for the 2022 guideline: https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/hcp/clinical-guidance/index.html ('2022 CDC Clinical Practice Guideline at a Glance', fetched 2026-10-22; it does not mention the 2016 app).

Record cases/cdc-opioid-prescribing-guideline.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign