Douglas McDonald, PhD, a Principal Associate at Abt Associates, has been conducting research and evaluation projects on prevention, treatment, and control of substance use and abuse (including both illegal and Rx drugs), opioid prescribing, healthcare, and criminal justice policies and practices, among other topics. Most of his work in the past decade has focused on the opioid epidemic. This includes National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded epidemiological research on the prevalence of opioid prescribing and of opioid diversion; providing research support to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's development of opioid prescribing guidelines; two other projects for CDC to improve safety of opioid prescribing; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-funded studies of opioid use and high-risk use by Medicare beneficiaries; and studies of prescription drug monitoring programs to identify high-risk opioid patients. He has also conducted many studies of criminal justice processing of persons charged with illegal drug use or distribution, and evaluations of drug treatment programs in prisons and in community-based probation and parole agencies.