This article outlines a comprehensive research agenda dedicated specifically to addiction recovery, not just treatment or remission. White and Kelly argue that despite decades of addiction research, science still knows far too little about how people achieve and sustain long‑term recovery. The authors identify twelve priority areas for recovery research, including recovery definitions and measurement, prevalence, multiple recovery pathways, family recovery, recovery across the lifespan, recovery‑oriented systems of care, and thriving or flourishing in recovery. They also emphasize the ethical importance of including people with lived experience as partners in research design, interpretation, and dissemination.
Why this matters for recovery advocacy:
This article provides a roadmap advocates can use to push funders, researchers, and policymakers to treat recovery as a public health outcome in its own right. It reinforces the legitimacy of peer support, recovery communities, and long‑term supports, and strengthens advocacy arguments for recovery‑oriented policies, data collection, and investment. Most importantly, it centers lived experience as essential to shaping effective, ethical recovery science.