Hi everyone! We’re excited to share the August edition of our Healthy Intersections Podcast with you. This month, we hosted Dr. Amanda Onwuka, a social epidemiologist and health services researcher at RTI International, as well as Jeremy Ney, author of American Inequality. We talk about the epidemic of drug overdose deaths in the US, mental… Read More »
Pain was widely under-treated in the 1980s. Two decades ago, pain was recognized as an important problem that needed to be managed by healthcare providers. Today, the opioid crisis has led to under-treatment once again. Professional recognition of pain as a symptom that needs managing was the eventual outcome of several decades of research. Again… Read More »
The Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) was started by AcademyHealth and is a collaborative research network of state Medicaid agencies and university partners. The goal of the network is to allow analysis and learning about Medicaid by facilitating comparison across states and aggregate data with a shorter lag time than other available sources. This… Read More »
The opioid epidemic and substance use disorders have garnered national attention as overdose deaths continue at an alarming rate. Synthetic opioids – chiefly fentanyl – are the culprit in many of those deaths. The Commission’s report Earlier this month, the bipartisan Congressional Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, with representatives from many Federal agencies and… Read More »
The United States is currently experiencing multiple, simultaneous epidemics that claim thousands of lives every week. According to the CDC, over 81,000 drug overdose deaths occurred between June 2019 and May 2020. That’s the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period. An estimated 93,000 Americans die annually from alcohol-related causes. Many… Read More »
When a call came in from the county coroner, it was never good news. Every once in a while, her work included a shock big enough to share with the public health team where I served as Medical Director. This was the case that Monday afternoon. Two teenage deaths, likely from opioid overdoses, likely the… Read More »
The opioid crisis has captured America’s attention, becoming an official “national emergency” and prompting swift action from government agencies, patient advocates, and health care providers. This is as it should be. Over the past decade, opioid overdoses have led to millions of hospitalizations, more than 100,000 deaths, and caused great harm in communities all across… Read More »
The economic burden of the U.S. opioid epidemic likely exceeds $78.5 billion per year when considering its impact on healthcare, substance abuse treatment, the criminal justice system, and productivity costs. Although medication assisted treatment for opioid abuse (covered previously at our blog) may help to reduce these costs [pdf], the epidemic is likely to continue to negatively impact… Read More »
In 2019, mental health and opioid use disorders remain major public health issues. The most recent estimates suggest that 40 million adults experience mental illness in the U.S. and nearly 8 million adults experience both mental and substance use disorders at the same time. Individuals with mental illness also face higher risks of co-occurring chronic health conditions and… Read More »
Reactions to the opioid crisis are affecting patients in need of hospice and end-of-life care in the United States. Hospice providers have been largely exempt from the increasing regulation of opioid and narcotic prescriptions, as most recent laws and regulations affecting opioid prescribing specifically exempt individuals receiving cancer treatment, palliative care, or those nearing their end-of-life. However,… Read More »
[Editors’ note: This post was originally published on Feb. 7, 2018.] Now more than ever, we need a sensible, unified, national response to the opioid epidemic; a response that recognizes the gravity of the situation and the reality that opioid use disorder (OUD) is a chronic – and treatable – condition. While there are many… Read More »
Despite continuous efforts to address the problem, high rates of prescription opioid use and abuse continue to plague our country. According to the CDC, deaths involving prescription opioids in the United States have quadrupled since 1999, and so have the sales of these prescription drugs. In 2015, the American Public Health Association published a policy… Read More »
As the City of Worcester Commissioner of Health and Human Services, I have developed city-wide initiatives and worked on policy change to address three primary health issues prevalent in our community, those being addiction, mental health, and homelessness, which all tend to occur hand in hand. Addiction is the largest public health and public safety… Read More »
“Neonatal abstinence syndrome” (NAS) sounds deceptively innocuous, given that it is literally infant drug withdrawal. It is usually caused by prenatal exposure to opioids but can also result from maternal consumption of other substances, like alcohol and antianxiety medications. Common symptoms include excessive high-pitched crying, fever, sweating, irritability, vomiting, diarrhea, rapid breathing, sleep disturbances, and poor… Read More »
Opioid addiction seems to be in the news every day. But what’s the difference between an opioid user and an opioid addict? First, let’s define our terms. Opioids are drugs derived from the opium poppy, including heroin and morphine. The class also includes synthetic opium-derived prescription painkillers including oxycontin and fentanyl, as well as drugs… Read More »
Opiate overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, killing more than 50,000 people in 2015. About 20,000 of those deaths were attributed to the use of prescription opiate medications. As a physician, I want to alleviate my patients’ pain, but I have also taken an oath to do my… Read More »
Despite a rapid expansion in the use of buprenorphine-naloxone (bup-nx) as a treatment for opioid use disorder, there is little understanding of the patterns of treatment. In a newly published-ahead-of-print Medical Care article, Brendan Saloner and colleagues from Johns Hopkins used an all-payer claims database to investigate what factors predict the duration of treatment, dosage, and continuity of treatment for… Read More »
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), more than 18,000 people died from overdoses of prescription opioids in 2014. This is more than the number of overdose deaths attributed to heroin (10,854) and cocaine (5,415) combined. Opioids are pain relievers that are chemically similar to morphine. Existing clinical guidelines recommend against exceeding a threshold… Read More »