'Treatment-first' addiction toolkit from HHS emphasizes faith | STAT
Skip to Main Content
My Account
Reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine
Search
Log In
Try STAT+
My Account
News
Latest
Series & Investigations
Business
Biotech
Pharma
Health Tech
Health Insurance
Hospitals
Medical Devices
Washington
Policy
FDA
NIH
Science
CRISPR
Gene Therapy
Neuroscience
Public Health
Addiction
Covid-19
Abortion
Health Disparities
Infectious Disease
Mental Health
Disease
Cancer
Cardiovascular Disease
Chronic Disease
Diabetes
Alzheimer's
Obesity
Features
Health Care Costs
The Deadliest Drug
Science, Shattered
Newsletters
Opinion
Columns
Adam Feuerstein
Matthew Herper
Ed Silverman
Reports
E-books
Podcasts
Tools & Trackers
CRISPR Tracker
Breakthrough Device Tracker
Generative AI Tracker
Obesity Drug Tracker
Events
Upcoming Events
Summits
Community
STAT Wunderkinds 2026
Video
Advertise
STAT Brand Studio
What's the word?<br>Test your knowledge with our new weekday mini crossword
Start solving
Health
Trump administration’s new ‘treatment-first’ addiction toolkit emphasizes faith, abstinence
Strategy nods to medication but rejects Biden-era ‘housing first’ doctrine
Manage alerts for this article
Email this article
Share this article
A new Trump administration addiction "toolkit" moves away from harm reduction and "housing first" policies of the Biden administration.Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images
By Lev Facher<br>Aug. 12, 2026
Addiction Reporter
Lev Facher<br>[email protected]
Lev’s reporting has explored Americans’ deadly hostility to addiction medications, subpar treatment offered in jails and prisons, shifts in the illicit drug supply and consumption behavior, controversies surrounding harm reduction, and recent innovations in addiction medicine. You can reach him on Signal at levfacher.51.
The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a new framework for helping Americans facing the often-intertwined circumstances of addiction and homelessness.
In a new toolkit, the White House unveiled a “treatment first” model that boosts faith-based interventions while rejecting harm reduction principles and the “housing first” strategy that characterized the Biden administration’s approach. While the new strategy favors medicalized approaches to treating addiction, it cites abstinence as the ultimate goal as opposed to also celebrating decreased drug use and related harms.<br>Advertisement
The toolkit is in keeping with the Trump administration’s previous actions on addiction issues, ranging from its Great American Recovery Initiative, to a “tough love” approach toward people who use drugs, to a broader hostility toward harm reduction principles.
“Treatment must come first. Recovery begins when we connect people with effective care, not leave them trapped in addiction and homelessness,” health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “This toolkit gives communities practical, evidence-based strategies to expand treatment, support lasting recovery, and help people reclaim their independence.”
The new program stresses a holistic approach to aiding addiction recovery and helping people experiencing homelessness, ranging from encouraging consistent sleep cycles and daily schedules for treatment-related activity to making employment a central component of the overall strategy.<br>Advertisement
Related Story
Bipartisan bill seeks to allow direct prescribing of methadone for opioid addiction
Above all, the administration stressed that it opposed providing access to housing on an unconditional basis, citing one study that showed veterans in a supportive housing group were more likely to die of a drug overdose. Abstinence, too, was a primary goal, though the toolkit made clear that relapse should be treated as a setback but not necessarily a failure, and that recovery is not necessarily linear.
“I have met men and women whose lives have been transformed by treatment and recovery,” Scott Turner, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said in a statement. “Housing is essential, but housing alone is not enough.”
Despite the Trump administration’s intense opposition, “housing first” strategies have seen some success in recent years, perhaps most notably in Houston, where the city moved 25,000 people from the streets into homes over the course of a decade. City officials widely describe the program as both a local success and a national model, though more recently, the program has struggled with funding while homelessness rates have held steady.
The new strategy also favors prioritizing people who have lived experience with addiction, homelessness, and recovery for influential jobs and positions within organizations conducting homeless outreach and offering pathways to recovery.
The strategy makes only passing mention of two medications known to vastly reduce one’s odds of dying of opioid overdose, methadone and...