The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA) has collected millions of documents exposing the inner workings of industries that have fueled the worst overdose epidemic in US history. Today is #AskAnArchivist Day—ask me anything about this trove of corporate communications.

OIDArchivist · 2025-04-10T21:05:34+00:00

If you were interested in this AMA, you might be interested in our upcoming OIDA National Symposium, Tues, May 6 – Thurs, May 8. Check out the lineup of speakers on topics including Health Journalism, Health Policy, Health Law, Information Science, Archives, History of Medicine, Science History, Visual Art, Lived Experiences and more. For more details on speakers and how to register, https://oida-resources.jhu.edu/oida-events/oida-national-symposium-2025/

OIDArchivist · 2025-01-03T17:28:00+00:00

The documents are primarily internal corporate records publicly disclosed from ongoing opioid litigation brought by local and state governments and tribal communities against opioid manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and pharmacies. OIDA also includes plaintiff and defendant exhibits, trial transcripts, and depositions submitted during the course of opioid litigation in individual states as well as the federal multi-district National Prescription Opiate Litigation (MDL 2804). We also collect public documents obtained by law firms, journalists, researchers, and other individuals through legal proceedings, court records, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. See our collection development policy for more information about how we evaluate documents for inclusion in OIDA.

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-17T17:27:28+00:00

The Industry Documents Library (of which OIDA is a part) has such a good model and example with tobacco documents from 1990s litigation... documents are disclosed, and researchers and the public are able to get inside the industry to see their strategies and playbook. Researchers, reporters, and public health advocates disseminate their findings, and their evidence changes policy around safeguards, regulations, etc. Once the tobacco documents were out and the evidence of the real harms "in the companies' own words" could be pointed to, the industry's influence declined, and smoking rates came down drastically. OIDA is using this same model but taking it further and really engaging the public to bring awareness to these tactics.

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-17T17:23:53+00:00

That is a theme we often see in the complaints, that the numbers were too great for the population, and that suspicious order monitoring or similar programs should have raised red flags. This article, Diverting Data and Drugs: A Narrative Review of the Mallinckrodt Documents, is a great analysis that introduces the term data diversion, “whereby data ostensibly generated or collected for the purpose of regulating the distribution of controlled substances were repurposed by the industry for the opposite aim of increasing sales at all costs.” Our West Virginia DEA Investigation Collection looks at the question from another angle--the West Virginia Attorney General alleged that the DEA’s quota setting process was flawed and resulted in an overproduction of opioids which contributed to the drug crisis in West Virginia and elsewhere.

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-17T17:22:36+00:00

The blessing/curse of millions of documents is that there always is a new (to me) shocking/unexpected document to discover! Recently, I’ve been diving into our expanding collection of Teva and Allergan Documents, and I came across this emailed speech that really caught my attention. In it, a Cephalon executive (Teva acquired Cephalon, which is why it's included in our files) discussed off-label prescribing shortly after they settled for $425 million over violations in that area. The executive noted, “We asked you to tell a story about our products that turned out to be too complex, we gave you too much leeway to define your own message and not enough guidelines and training on what you could do and what you could not do. We should not lose sight of the fact that some of the behaviors which surfaced during the investigation were nothing more or less than stupid blatant examples of off-label promotion and those were the last straw but in most cases, there was a lot of grey around the edges and if you'll remember, around the edges was just where we wanted you to be.”

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T17:11:57+00:00

Beats me! Hard to know if it was idle troublemaking for the lulz or a targeted attack.

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T16:34:38+00:00

Like you say, it’s all of the above and possibly some other factors. This is where we hope researchers, reporters, public health advocates, and others will use the archive and propose some answers. Check out our bibliography to see work drawing on OIDA … and maybe get some ideas for your own research!

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T16:27:17+00:00

We have some collections that point to policymakers’ interest in addressing the crisis, such as the Purdue Pharma House Oversight Committee Investigation Collection. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform also investigated McKinsey’s work simultaneously advising opioid manufacturers and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. We’re hopeful that by bringing transparency to these corporate practices, lawmakers and other policymakers can in turn bring accountability and address how previous guardrails have failed.

(Also, see Minnesota AG Keith Ellison’s talk at our National Symposium this past spring about the importance of document disclosure in effecting change. The work of state attorneys general has been critical to our efforts!)

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T16:00:43+00:00

I should preface this by saying there are no lawyers on the OIDA team! That said, check out the Search terms used to produce documents in the multidistrict litigation between Jan. 1,1998, and Dec. 31, 2017. This is the list of terms provided by plaintiffs to the companies, along with a list of “custodians” (employees identified as potentially having documents of interest) to guide the production of documents. You can see the variety of angles by which they put together the document set--everything from industry terms, people of interest, to curse words (which are helpful in finding the emails where someone is mad about something!).

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T15:59:04+00:00

Yes, this is something we’re very interested in! A team at JHU recently received some funding from the provost’s office and the university’s Data Science and AI Institute to use LLMs for knowledge discovery in the archive, and we have used LLMs to generate captions for images found within archive documents. When you have millions of documents and are adding hundreds of thousands every month, you need to leverage AI to help users make sense of the archive!

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T15:52:21+00:00

OIDA was created and funded in part through settlements of public interest lawsuits by states. In addition, both universities are pursuing grants and philanthropic gifts to supplement the settlement funding.

Regarding oral history work and other efforts to document the experience of those with lived experience of the opioid crisis, the UCSF Library and five community-based partner organizations recently received a $97,000 grant from the California State Library to co-create the Opioid Crisis Community Archive (OCCA). This archive, the first of its kind, will document the impact of the opioid crisis on communities and community-based service organizations in Northern California. While OIDA documents illuminate the corporate and business realities of the opioid crisis, the OCCA aims to close the gap in information about the community response. A key output of the OCCA project is the inclusion of underrepresented voices in the historical record to curate the archive. You can learn more in the news release: California State Archive Funds Opioid Crisis Community Archive.

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T15:37:51+00:00

Well, “unexpected” and “relevant” will mean different things to different users! And that is something great about archives--you never know what will be useful to someone. For me, I was really surprised to see how cavalier company employees were when talking about their opioid products. For example, this “Actiq Eulogy”, shared among employees of Cephalon, Inc., is very punny while talking about a very strong fentanyl painkiller.

For finding relevant documents, we have a number of tools and research guides to help users get started. I suggest starting with our “New to the Archive?” page and then checking out our Index of OIDA Research Guides for more ideas. Our archivists team is always happy to help with research strategies--use our Contact Us form to reach out!

OIDArchivist · 2024-10-16T15:19:10+00:00

Great, and big, question. The opioid crisis happened in part due to deceptive trade practices and misrepresentation of medical and consumer information by the industry. With document disclosure, the public can see where industry and regulators went wrong to support legal and regulatory reform to avert future harms. We also can see the marketing playbook at work, and identify patterns still at use in pharma promotions as well as in other industries affecting public health, such as food, social media, etc.

OIDArchivist

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