Substance use disorder (SUD) represents a multidimensional social and health crisis that continues to evolve in complexity and scale. In the United States alone, tens of thousands of individuals die annually from drug overdoses, and millions more experience chronic relapse cycles. Despite enormous public and private investment, treatment outcomes remain flat and inconsistent. A significant reason for this stagnation lies in the field’s short-term, crisis-centered orientation. The majority of treatment infrastructures remain bound to 20th-century paradigms: inpatient rehabilitation, abstinence-only frameworks, and episodic care models. Funding and insurance mechanisms reinforce short-term interventions, while fragmented data systems impede longitudinal learning.

Why the Addiction Treatment Industry Needs Foresight

Most addiction treatment systems respond to problems such as new substances, shifting insurance policy coverages, or cultural and political trends as they emerge rather than anticipating and preparing for them. Strategic foresight offers a pathway to address these limitations by helping stakeholders explore plausible futures, assess emerging risks and opportunities, and design proactive strategies. Project uptick explores the future of treatment through a structured foresight framework, with the goal of informing more humane, effective, and novel approaches to addiction care. This initiative aims to identify emerging signals, develop future scenarios, and generate actionable insights to shape policy, investment, and innovation in the coming years.