Substance use disorder (SUD) touches millions of lives, with nearly 49 million people in the U.S. aged 12 years and older estimated to have an SUD in 2023. Beyond the toll on individuals and families, the economic burden is staggering, reaching an estimated $3.73 trillion annually.
Despite the scale and impact of SUD, research remains fragmented. Traditional brick and mortar recruitment methods struggle to reach the full spectrum of individuals affected, particularly those facing stigma or health-related social needs (HRSN) such as unstable housing, food insecurity, and transportation barriers. These factors not only shape the path to recovery, they also make it difficult to systematically study substance use, reach research participants, and develop effective interventions.
This is where new, person-centered engagement and data models can make a difference.
Evidation’s Role: Continuous, Person-Centered Evidence Generation
Evidation connects directly with millions of individuals and uses a multi-modal approach to data collection (including surveys, wearable data, EHR data, and biosamples) to understand health behaviors and outcomes over time. By providing rewards and personal health insights in exchange for consented data contribution and engagement, Evidation builds trusted, longitudinal relationships that make it possible to observe behavior and context as they evolve.
Within the Evidation Community, approximately 38,000 individuals reporting substance use already share consented data on demographics, health insurance status, zip code, social determinants of health (e.g., transportation and food concerns), comorbidities, medical care, prescriptions, quality of life, physical activity, preventive health, and more on an ongoing basis.
Introducing RESHAPE: Research and Engagement on Substance Use Harnessing Awareness and Personalized Education
To build on Evidation’s existing foundation of real-world data, with support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Evidation is developing a digital experience within the Evidation app, RESHAPE, that will engage and educate individuals with SUD while collecting data to support the research and development needs of organizations developing treatments for SUD.
For individuals, RESHAPE extends Evidation’s existing user engagement model that has proven successful in fostering long-term engagement on migraine, heart failure, immune-mediated conditions, and other health conditions, to SUD.
For researchers, RESHAPE results in an engaged cohort capable of generating consented multi-modal, real-world data at scale. Because participation is longitudinal and interactive, investigators can follow individuals prospectively, observe changes in contextual factors, and re-engage participants as research needs evolve.
Phase 1: Listening to Individuals and Researchers to Design a Fit for Purpose Product
The development of RESHAPE followed a phased approach which began with soliciting feedback from individuals and researchers to align on a product design that will:
- Encourage longitudinal participation
- Enable life sciences and healthcare organizations developing SUD interventions
What We Found: Qualitative Insights
We interviewed Evidation members who reported substance use and health-related social needs to understand what product features would most effectively engage this population. In parallel, we interviewed researchers across the life sciences and healthcare sectors to understand what product features would deliver the greatest research value.
Collectively, the interviews identified six RESHAPE product features relevant to individuals with SUD and organizations developing treatments for SUD. These included a variety of data collection and engagement features (detailed surveys and ecological momentary assessments (EMAs), qualitative data, and educational resources).
What We Found: Quantitative Insights
To gather broader feedback on qualitative findings, we launched a survey to understand willingness to participate in RESHAPE. Within 24 hours, 78% of 449 respondents said they would be very willing to participate and 71% believed the program would be very or extremely helpful in working toward their goals.
This early interest demonstrates that individuals using substances are both reachable and willing to share information about their everyday experience, creating the foundation for rich, multi-modal, real-world data that traditional studies often lack access to.
Phase 2: Validating Product Design through Pilot Deployment
As a next step, RESHAPE will be piloted in the Evidation app to evaluate user engagement, substance use patterns, activity data, and overall satisfaction. This pilot will also assess willingness to participate in longer-term SUD research, helping us refine both the participant experience and the analytic framework for sponsors.
What Sets RESHAPE Apart
While many digital SUD tools focus on a single substance or short-term outcomes, RESHAPE is designed to capture experiences with multiple substances and to enable long-term research participation. By combining participant-reported and passively collected data from wearables, RESHAPE can surface insights into the interplay between substance use, social and structural context, and overall health.
For the research community, this model offers:
- Access to hard-to-reach and stigmatized populations at national scale
- Continuous, permissioned data flows across behavioral, clinical, and social domains
- Real-time recontact for embedded or adaptive studies
- Fit-for-purpose evidence to inform intervention design, feasibility, and effectiveness research
Partner with Evidation
RESHAPE is a new approach to understanding substance use and its broader social context. If your organization is working to develop or evaluate new interventions in this space, Evidation can help you access the data and individuals that make meaningful evidence possible. Contact us at partner@evidation.com
Research reported here was supported by the National Institute On Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44DA062284. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.