SOURCE
SOURCE (Simulation of Opioid Use, Response, Consequences, and Effects) is a national-level simulation model designed to understand and project the course of the U.S. opioid crisis. Developed by a multi-institutional team and funded by the FDA, SOURCE captures the dynamics of opioid use, treatment, overdose, and mortality, and the impact of policies over time.
Key Features
- Tracks opioid use, misuse, treatment access, and overdose trends
- Simulates the impact of interventions, including naloxone access, medication treatment, and prescribing policies
- Calibrated to multiple public datasets (NSDUH, CDC WONDER, TEDS, etc.)
- Supports scenario analysis for national-level decision-making
- Built using system dynamics modeling with feedback-rich components
Model structure
Main publications
First paper to introduce the model (PNAS): Modeling the evolution of the US opioid crisis for national policy development
Companion paper to use the model for strategy analysis (Science Advances): Reducing opioid use disorder and overdose deaths in the United States: A dynamic modeling analysis
Media Coverage
Nature: Mega-model predicts US opioid deaths will soon peak
Harvard News: New tool models evolution of opioid crisis
MIT News: New data-driven simulation model projects national opioid crisis to worsen before it gets better
Awards
NEW: The SOURCE model (specifically, PNAS paper) received the Jay Wright Forrester Award in 2025.
Tse Yang Lim received MIT Sloan Doctoral Research Forum Prize in 2021.
Tse Yang Lim, Erin Stringfellow, Celia Stafford, and Catherine DiGennaro received the 2021 Lupina Young Researchers Award and the Dana Meadows Award.
Publications using SOURCE
JAMA Psychiatry – Structural Drivers of the Drop in Opioid Overdose Deaths in the US
Journal of Addiction Medicine – Long-term effects of increasing buprenorphine treatment seeking, duration, and capacity on opioid overdose fatalities: a model-based analysis
PNAS Nexus – Enumerating contributions of fentanyls and other factors to the unprecedented 2020 rise in opioid overdose deaths: model-based analysis
JAMA Health Forum – Cost-effectiveness of increasing buprenorphine treatment initiation, duration, and capacity among individuals who use opioids
Publications inspired by SOURCE
Health Affairs Forefront – Removing the X-waiver is one small step toward increasing treatment of opioid use disorder, but great leaps are needed
JAMA Psychiatry – Racial and ethnic disparities in buprenorphine treatment duration in the US
Annals of Medicine – Opioid overdose decedent characteristics during COVID-19
Int’l Journal of Drug Policy – Changes in characteristics of drug overdose death trends during the COVID-19 pandemic
JAMA Network Open – Racial disparities in opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts
Addiction – The association between longitudinal trends in receipt of buprenorphine for opioid use disorder and buprenorphine-waivered providers in the United States
JAMA Network Open: Factors associated with abrupt discontinuation of long-term high-dose opioid Treatment
The Lancet Regional Health – Americas: Temporal and spatial trends of fentanyl co-occurrence in the illicit drug supply in the United States: a serial cross-sectional analysis
Other links