E-mails to Nudge Safer and Better-Informed Prescribing of Risky Drugs

February 8, 2026 updated by: Adam Sacarny, PhD, Columbia University
This study will test e-mails to encourage engagement with the Minnesota prescription monitoring program (PMP/PDMP) and will evaluate the effect of these e-mails on PMP/PDMP use and controlled substance prescribing.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years, and many overdoses continue to involve prescribed medications like opioids and stimulants. At the same time, state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), which help clinicians prescribe these medications safely, remain underused. In Minnesota, 32% of opioid prescriptions are written by clinicians who do not use the PDMP. In many states, including Minnesota, policymakers have limited tools to raise PDMP use even though it is often required under state law. To address this policy dilemma, this study will test e-mails designed to facilitate PDMP use and evaluate their effects on PDMP use and controlled substance prescribing. This study will include a projected 7,126 physician and physician assistant prescribers of opioids and other controlled substances who lack active PDMP accounts, never query the PDMP, or query the PDMP infrequently relative to their prescribing volume. To generate evidence on clinician motivation for responding to encouragement, the study will randomly vary messaging to focus on legal requirements to use the PDMP vs. clinical benefits of the PDMP.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

7872

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • New York
      • New York, New York, United States, 10032
        • Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Minnesota physician or physician assistant
  • Controlled substance prescriber not following state requirements to maintain an active PDMP account, or opioid prescriber not searching the PDMP or infrequently searching the PDMP

Exclusion Criteria:

  • No e-mail address available

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control
Experimental: Legal Mandate Messaging
Behavioral: PDMP Legal Mandate E-mail
E-mails highlighting the state's legal requirements to use the PDMP. There will be one initial email and one follow-up email one month later.
Experimental: Clinical Benefit Messaging
Behavioral: PDMP Clinical Benefit E-mail
E-mails highlighting the clinical benefits of having access to the PDMP and checking the PDMP before prescribing opioids. There will be one initial email and one follow-up email one month later.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Rate of PDMP Engagement
Time Frame: 2 months
An indicator for increased PDMP engagement during the 2-month period after the first e-mails were sent. It will indicate whether the level of engagement rose from the baseline level that resulted in the clinician's enrollment into the study. For clinicians who lacked an account, the outcome will indicate whether they created one; for clinicians with an inactive account, the outcome will indicate whether they reactivated it. For those who never searched, it will indicate any search, and for those who rarely searched, it will indicate whether their search rate rose.
2 months
Volume of Potentially Guideline-discordant Opioid Prescribing
Time Frame: 2 months

A composite of several measures of potentially guideline-discordant opioid prescribing. These will include:

  1. Opioid co-prescriptions with other opioids
  2. Opioid co-prescriptions with benzodiazepines
  3. Opioid co-prescriptions with gabapentinoids
  4. High daily opioid doses
  5. Long-duration opioid prescriptions to opioid-naïve individuals
2 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Columbia University

Collaborators

University of Southern California
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Bowdoin College
Minnesota Board of Pharmacy
Minnesota Management and Budget

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Adam Sacarny, PhD, Columbia University
  • Principal Investigator: Mireille Jacobson, PhD, University of Southern California
  • Principal Investigator: Tatyana Avilova, PhD, Bowdoin College

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

July 17, 2024

Primary Completion (Actual)

September 14, 2024

Study Completion (Actual)

September 24, 2025

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

May 30, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 4, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

June 5, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 11, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 8, 2026

Last Verified

February 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • AAAV1928
  • AEARCTR-0013549 (Registry Identifier: AEA RCT Registry (socialscienceregistry.org))

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Clinical Trials on Opioid Prescribing

Clinical Trials on PDMP Legal Mandate E-mail

Search Similar Trials

Sponsors and Collaborators

Medical Conditions

Drug Interventions

CROs by country

CROs in Kyrgyzstan

Conditions

Rare Diseases

Drug Interventions

Dietary Supplements

Sponsor/Collaborators

Locations

Subscribe