Cunningham has applied her expertise to advocating for policies and programs that address addiction in New York City and across the United States.[22] She has also noted the importance of integrating addiction treatment into the rest of the medical system to facilitate holistic care of patients fighting addiction.[23][24] In 2015, she was appointed to Mayor Bill de Blasio's ad-hoc Task Force Heroin and Prescription Opioid Public Awareness, working to expand access to buprenorphine and naloxone to treat opioid use disorders and deaths due to overdoses, while raising awareness of these treatments and destigmatizing their use.[25] She has also served as a reviewer of the 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for primary care physicians prescribing opioids for chronic pain management and in 2018 was appointed to a CDC board of scientific advisors to advise on approaches to address the opioid epidemic in the United States.[26][27]