News & Blog
April 21, 2017
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced it will soon provide $485 million in grants to help states and territories combat the opioid crisis. The funding, which is the first of two rounds provided for in the 21st Century Cures Act, will be provided through State Targeted Response to the Opioid Crisis Grants […]
Evidence supports mandating registration To address the crisis of opioid misuse, abuse, and overdose, every state but Missouri has implemented a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) that collects data from retail pharmacies on all dispensed controlled substances. PDMPs can help prescribers identify patients who might misuse or divert controlled substances, as well as patients who […]
The danger of that first prescription “Just in case,” the oral surgeon said, as he prescribed the opioid hydrocodone for my 17-year-old son, who just had his wisdom teeth out. “But you might try Motrin first,” he added. Not knowing what the next hours, or days, would bring, we filled the prescription for 20 pills. […]
Dr. Bulat Idrisov is a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) International Program INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Samet, CHERISH HCV/HIV co-director. Dr. Idrisov completed his medical training in pediatrics and internal medicine in Russia and received a Fulbright Scholarship to complete his Master of Science in Global Health […]
An unintended consequence of well-intentioned policy It seems self-evident: one way to address the epidemic of opioid deaths is to make prescription opioids harder to misuse. OxyContin, for example, is especially dangerous when it is crushed for ingestion, inhalation, or injection. In 2010, the FDA approved a reformulated, abuse-deterrent version of OxyContin that made the […]
Public Health Department’s Three-Pronged Strategy Opioids have emerged as one of the greatest public health threats facing the United States. Nationally, fatal overdoses involving opioids have quadrupled since 1999. Opioids contributed to over 33,000 deaths in 2015 alone. In Philadelphia, the numbers are equally sobering. Although the final toxicology reports are pending, approximately 900 deaths […]