Arkansas Children's in Little Rock is opening a first-of-its-kind center that will focus on the "impacts of the opioid crisis on the fetus, newborn and developing children."
The National Center for Opioid Research & Clinical Effectiveness will be funded in part by $50 million from opioid settlement funds, which was designated by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, according to an email release shared Nov. 9 with Becker's.
"Today we are making history in the fight against opioid abuse in America," Mr. Griffin said in the release. "This research center will be the first of its kind not just in Arkansas, but in the entire country. It will put our state on the front line of saving future generations from the scourge of opioid addiction and on the map as the center for pediatric opioid research in the United States."
The research center will use brain imaging technology, better equipping experts in fetal and neonatal neuroimaging to study how opioids impact children’s developing brains. It will also lead multicenter clinical trials and develop an advanced analytics and informatics infrastructure that will focus on statistical analysis and machine learning.
Construction on the 45,000-square-foot facility, which will be located in the research corridor of the health system’s Little Rock campus, is expected to begin in 2024, the release said.