NIDA selects Boulder Care as direct awardee, validating telehealth as a powerful solution for people facing steep barriers to access and continuity of care

PORTLAND, OR, UNITED STATES, July 16, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Boulder Care today announced $1.8M in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. Boulder will use the grant to design, deliver, and evaluate the care pathways that make telehealth addiction treatment work for patients in the country's most complex and difficult-to-reach settings.

Roughly 7 million Americans have opioid use disorder (OUD). While medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are proven to reduce overdose risk and save lives, fewer than one in five people with OUD ever receive this treatment. The gap is even wider for people in specific settings with entrenched barriers to accessing and staying in care:

— Community corrections and reentry programs
— Pregnancy and postpartum care settings
— Tribal Nations healthcare systems
— Transition from residential treatment settings
— Transition from emergency departments

Boulder's NIH-funded research will tailor telehealth MOUD pathways for patients in each of these settings, and generate the rigorous evidence needed to scale that care.

“As we begin to bend the curve on the opioid overdose crisis, we cannot leave behind the most underserved Americans,” said Stephanie Strong, founder and CEO of Boulder. “Boulder is building care for the populations most in need of better treatment, including pregnant and postpartum patients, people re-entering their communities after being incarcerated, members of Tribal Nations, and more. This grant will accelerate our development of specific care pathways these settings require and generate rigorous evidence to change how critical care gets delivered, funded, and scaled."

Boulder will partner with five dedicated sites to provide patients with the tools to stay connected (a smartphone preloaded with the Boulder app, plus cellular service and Wi-Fi), setting-specific infrastructure, and support through transitions between care settings. The study will measure care continuity and retention, and whether people's lives improve across a range of real-world outcomes including employment, incarceration, ED and hospital visits, and quality-of-life measures.

"This award reflects NIH’s confidence in telehealth’s potential to reach the people most often left out of addiction research and care," said Dr. Ayesha Appa, Senior Vice President and Head of Medical Affairs at Boulder. "Too often, addiction care is least reliable at the moments when people need it most. This research gives us the opportunity to learn, in a rigorous and practical way, what meaningfully helps people stay engaged in treatment. The evidence we generate will ripple out well beyond Boulder, shaping how providers, policymakers, and health systems fund and deliver care at scale."

This award adds to Boulder’s eight-year track record of research contributions to the addiction medicine field, including NIH-funded research and peer reviewed publications demonstrating superior outcomes. As part of Boulder's commitment to move the addiction medicine industry forward, the company’s dedicated research team works alongside community-based partners — as it will in this study — combining local expertise, cross-ecosystem collaboration, and evidence generation to redefine addiction care.

This research is supported by NIDA, part of the National Institutes of Health, under award number R44DA061386. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About Boulder Care

Boulder is a leader in high-quality addiction medicine, providing evidence-based treatment for opioid and alcohol use disorder over telehealth. Dedicated care teams collaborate to provide low-barrier access to medication-based treatment and emphasize long-term support as patients work toward unique recovery goals. Boulder partners with health plans and community organizations to offer affordable treatment to patients across the U.S. Learn more about Boulder’s mission to improve the lives of people with substance use disorders at www.boulder.care or contact us at press@boulder.care.

Katie Maffei
Boulder Care
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