(Providence, RI) -- Rhode Island Hospital is launching a new opioid abuse research center. The hospital has received a five-year federal grant worth nearly twelve-million dollars to establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, where scientists from the hospital, Brown University and Care New England's Women and Infants Hospital will work together. Rhode Island is among the top ten states for rates of opioid overdose deaths, with more than double the national rate in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.